


























THE CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING 
OF MAN 


VOLUME II 
The Official 
Oxford Conference 
Books 


THE OFFICIAL OXFORD CONFERENCE BOOKS 


1. THE CHURCH AND ITS FUNCTION IN SOCIETY 

by Dr. W. A. Visser’t Hooft and Dr. J. H. Oldham 

2. THE CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING OF MAN 

by Prof. T. E. Jessop, Prof. R. L. Calhoun, Prof. N. N. Alexeiev, Prof. 
Emil Brunner, Pastor Pierre Maury, the Rev. Austin Farrer, Prof. W. M. 
Horton 

3. THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND HISTORY 

by Prof. C. H. Dodd, Dr. Edwyn Bevan, Dr. Christopher Dawson, Prof. 
Eugene Lyman, Prof. Paul Tillich, Prof. H. Wendland, Prof. H. G. 
Wood 

4. CHRISTIAN FAITH AND THE COMMON LIFE 

by Nils Ehrenstrom, Prof. M. Dibelius, Prof. John Bennett, The Arch¬ 
bishop of York, Prof. Reinhold Niebuhr, Prof. H. H. Farmer, Dr. 
W. Wiesner 

5. CHURCH AND COMMUNITY 

by Prof. E. E. Aubrey, Prof. E. Barker, Dr. Bjorkquist, Dr. H. Lilje, 
Prof. S. Zankov, Dr. Paul Douglass, Prof. K. S. Latourette, M. Boegner 

6. CHURCH, COMMUNITY, AND STATE IN RELA¬ 
TION TO EDUCATION 

by Prof. F. Clarke, Dr. Paul Monroe, Prof. W. Zenkovsky, C. R. Morris, 
J. W. D. Smith, “ X,” Prof. Ph. Kohnstamm, J. H. Oldham 

7. THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH AND THE WORLD OF 
NATIONS 

by the Marquess of Lothian, Sir Alfred Zimmern, Dr. O. von der 
Gablentz, John Foster Dulles, Prof. Max Huber, Pastor W. Menn, the 
Rev. V. A. Demant, Prof. Otto Piper, Canon C. E. Raven 

THE OXFORD CONFERENCE: Official Report 

Including the full text of the reports issued by the five sections of the 
Conference, Oxford, England, 1937. With an introduction by J. H. 
Oldham 

WORLD CHAOS OR WORLD CHRISTIANITY 

A popular interpretation of Oxford and Edinburgh, 1937 
by Henry Smith Leiper 


THE CHRISTIAN 
UNDERSTANDING OF MAN 


V s ’ 'JL, . 

T. E. JESSOP 
R. L. CALHOUN 
N. ALEXEIEV 
EMIL BRUNNER 
AUSTIN FARRER 
WALTER M. HORTON 
PIERRE MAURY 


Willett, Clark & Company 

CHICAGO NEW YORK 

1938 


Copyright 1938 by 
WILLETT, CLARK & COMPANY 


Manufactured in The U. S. A. by The Plimpton Press 
Norwood, Mass.-La Porte, Ind. 


SEP 


-3 \938 


12302S 




CONTENTS 


General Introduction 


vii 


PART I 

The Scientific Account of Man 

By T. E. Jess op 


3 


The Dilemma of Humanitarian Modernism 

By Robert L. Calhoun 


45 


The Marxist Anthropology and the Christian Con¬ 
ception of Man 85 

By N. N. Alexeiev 


PART II 

The Christian Understanding of Man 141 

By Emil Brunner 

The Christian Doctrine of Man 181 

By Austin Farrer 

The Christian Understanding of Man 217 

By Walter Marshall Horton 

The Christian Doctrine of Man 245 

By Pierre Maury 


v 

























GENERAL INTRODUCTION 


Few will question the significance of the issues which en¬ 
gaged the attention of the conference on Church, Commu¬ 
nity, and State held at Oxford in July, 1937. More impor¬ 
tant than the conference itself is the continuing process, in 
which the conference was not more than an incident, of an 
attempt on the part of the Christian churches collectively 
— without, up to the present, the official participation of 
the Church of Rome, but not without the unofficial help 
of some of its thinkers and scholars 1 — to understand the 
true nature of the vital conflict between the Christian faith 
and the secular and pagan tendencies of our time, and to 
see more clearly the responsibilities of the church in rela¬ 
tion to the struggle. What is at stake is the future of Chris¬ 
tianity. The Christian foundations of western civilization 
have in some places been swept away and are everywhere 
being undermined. The struggle today concerns those 
common assumptions regarding the meaning of life with¬ 
out which, in some form, no society can cohere. These 
vast issues are focussed in the relation of the church to the 
state and to the community, because the non-Christian 
forces of today are tending more and more to find embodi¬ 
ment in an all-powerful state, committed to a particular 
philosophy of life and seeking to organize the whole of life 
in accordance with a particular doctrine of the end of 
man’s existence, and in an all-embracing community life 

1 A volume of papers by Roman Catholic writers dealing with subjects 
closely akin to the Oxford Conference and stimulated in part by the pre¬ 
paratory work for Oxford will be published shortly under the title Die 
Kirche Christi: ihre heilende, gestaltende und ordnende Kraft fur den 
Menschen und seine Welt. 

vii 


General Introduction 


viii 

which claims to be at once the source and the goal of all 
human activities: a state, that is to say, which aims at being 
also a church. 

To aid in the understanding of these issues the attempt 
was made in preparation for the conference at Oxford to 
enlist as many as possible of the ablest minds in different 
countries in a common effort to think out some of the 
major questions connected with the theme of the confer¬ 
ence. During the three years preceding the conference 
studies were undertaken wider in their range and more 
thorough in their methods than any previous effort of a 
similar kind on the part of the Christian churches. This 
was made possible by the fact that the Universal Christian 
Council for Life and Work, under whose auspices the con¬ 
ference was held, possessed a department of research at 
Geneva with two full-time directors and was also able, in 
view of the conference, to establish an office in London 
with two full-time workers and to set up an effective agency 
for the work of research in America. There was thus pro¬ 
vided the means of circulating in mimeographed form (in 
many instances in three languages) a large number of 
papers for comment, of carrying on an extensive and con¬ 
tinuous correspondence, and of maintaining close personal 
touch with many leading thinkers and scholars in different 
countries. 

Intensive study over a period of three years was devoted 
to nine main subjects. The results of this study are em¬ 
bodied in the six volumes to which this general introduc¬ 
tion relates and in two others. The plan and contents of 
each, and most of the papers, were discussed in at least two 
or three small international conferences or groups. The 
contributions were circulated in first draft to a number of 
critics in different countries and comments were received 
often from as many as thirty or forty persons. Nearly all 


General Introduction 


ix 


the papers were revised, and in some instances entirely 
rewritten, in the light of these criticisms. 

Both the range of the contributions and the fact that the 
papers have taken their present shape as the result of a wide 
international interchange of ideas give these books an ecu¬ 
menical character which marks a new approach to the sub¬ 
jects with which they deal. They thus provide an oppor¬ 
tunity such as has hardly existed before for the study in an 
ecumenical context of some of the grave and pressing prob¬ 
lems which today concern the Christian church through¬ 
out the world. 

The nine subjects to which preparatory study was de¬ 
voted were the following: 

1. The Christian Understanding of Man. 

2. The Kingdom of God and History. 

3. Christian Faith and the Common Life. 

4. The Church and Its Function in Society. 

5. Church and Community. 

6. Church and State. 

7. Church, Community and State in Relation to the Eco¬ 

nomic Order. 

8. Church, Community and State in Relation to Educa¬ 

tion. 

9. The Universal Church and the World of Nations. 

The last six of these subjects were considered at the Ox¬ 
ford Conference, and the reports prepared by the sections 
into which the conference was divided will be found in 
the official report of the conference entitled The Oxford 
Conference, Official Report. (Willett, Clark & Company). 

A volume on The Church and its Function in Society, 
by Dr. W. A. Visser’t Hooft and Dr. J. H. Oldham (Wil¬ 
lett, Clark & Company), was published prior to the con¬ 
ference. 

Three of the volumes in the present series of six have to 


X 


General Introduction 


do with the first three subjects in the list already given. 
These are fundamental issues which underlie the study of 
all the other subjects. The titles of these volumes are: 

The Christian Understanding of Man. 

The Kingdom of God and History. 

The Christian Faith and the Common Life. 

The remaining three volumes in the series are a contribu¬ 
tion to the study of three of the main subjects considered 
by the Oxford Conference. These are: 

Church and Community. 

Church, Community and State in Relation to Education. 

The Universal Church and the World of Nations. 

The subject of church and state is treated in a book by 
Mr. Nils Ehrenstrom, one of the directors of the research 
department. This has been written in the light of discus¬ 
sions in several international conferences and groups and 
of a wide survey of the relevant literature, and has been 
published under the title Christian Faith and the Modern 
State (Willett, Clark & Company). 

The planning and shaping of the volume is to a large 
extent the work of the directors of the research depart¬ 
ment, Dr. Hans Schonfeld and Mr. Nils Ehrenstrom. The 
editorial work and the preparation of the volumes for the 
press owes everything to the continuous labor of Miss Olive 
Wyon, who has also undertaken or revised the numerous 
translations, and in the final stages to the Rev. Edward S. 
Shillito, who during the last weeks accepted the responsi¬ 
bility of seeing the books through the press. Valuable 
help and advice was also given throughout the undertak¬ 
ing by Professor H. P. Van Dusen and Professor John 
Bennett of America. 

J. H. OLDHAM 

CHAIRMAN OF THE INTERNATIONAL 
RESEARCH COMMISSION 


LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS 


Jessop, Thomas Edmund, m.a., b.litt. 

Ferens Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the Faculty of Arts in the 
University College of Hull. Formerly Assistant Lecturer in Logic and 
Metaphysics in the University of Glasgow. 

Publications: Lugano and its Environs; Montreux and the Lake of 
Geneva; Locarno and its Valleys; Bibliography of George Berkeley, 
Bishop of Cloyne. 

Calhoun, Robert Lowry, b.d., m.a., ph.d. 

Professor of Historical Theology, Yale University, New Haven. For¬ 
merly instructor in philosophy and education, Carleton College, North- 
field. 

Publications: God and the Common Life. With others: Religious 
Realism; The Nature of Religious Experience; Church and State in 
the Modern World. 


Alexeiev, Nicolas N., doctor juris. 

Formerly Professor of the Philosophy of Law at Moscow University; 
Professor of the Philosophy of Law at Sympherol University (Cri¬ 
mea) ; Professor of Constitutional Law at Russian Juridical Faculty, 
Prague; Professor of Law, Russian Scientific Institute, Berlin. 
Publications: Natural Science and Sociology; Introduction to the 
Study of Law; General Theory of Law; Introduction to the Study of 
the State; Introduction to Law of Philosophy; Property and Socialism; 
General Theory of the State; Ways and Aims of Marxism. 


Brunner, Emil, d.d. 

Professor of Systematic and Practical Theology, University of Zurich. 
Publications: Die Mystik und das Wort; Religionsphilosophie; Der 
Mittler (tr. The Mediator) ; Gott und Mensch; The Word and the 
World; Das Gebot und die Ordnungen; Der Mensch im Widerspruch, 
etc. 


Farrer, rev. Austin Marsden, m.a. 

Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. Speakers Lecturer in the Univer¬ 
sity of Oxford. 


xi 


xii List of Contributors 

Horton, Walter Marshall, a.b., m.a., ph.d., b.d., 

S.T.M. 

Fairchild Professor of Theology in the Oberlin Graduate School of 
Theology, Ohio. Formerly Instructor in Philosophy of Religion and 
Systematic Theology, Union Theological Seminary, New York. 
Publications: Philosophy of the Abb? Bautain; Theism and the Mod¬ 
ern Mood; A Psychological Approach to Theology; Theism and the Sci¬ 
entific Spirit; Realistic Theology; Contemporary English Theology; 
God. 

Maury, Pierre, L. es l., b.theol. 

Pastor of the Reformed Church at Paris-Passy. Formerly Secretary of 
the World’s Student Christian Federation. 


Translators 

Professor Alexeiev’s paper was translated from German by the Rev. 
G. V. Jones; Professor Brunner’s, also from German, by Miss Olive 
Wyon; M. Pierre Maury’s paper, from French, by the Rev. D. G. M. 
Patrick. 


PART I 

THE SCIENTIFIC ACCOUNT OF MAN 

by 

T. E. Jessop 











































































































































































































































































THE SCIENTIFIC ACCOUNT OF MAN 


If anything in the history of human effort has succeeded it 
is science. In many respects it has even exceeded the high 
hopes set upon it. Regarded theoretically, it has fashioned 
systems of description and explanation of vast comprehen¬ 
siveness and astonishing exactitude, organized logically 
and confirmed by observation and experiment. Regarded 
practically, it has given us a control over the forces of na¬ 
ture which has lifted us far above the helplessness of ani¬ 
mals, thereby intensifying our humanity. We rise and 
sleep, work and play, in the keeping of science. We are 
almost dominated by it. This is one of the distinguishing 
marks of modern civilization. 

This dominance is being interpreted in many quarters 
as a challenge to religion. It is an old interpretation. 
Every major advance in science has been pressed to put re¬ 
ligion on the defensive — in the seventeenth century the 
Copernican theory as revised by Galileo and Kepler, in 
the eighteenth Newtonian mechanics, in the nineteenth the 
theory of evolution. In the present century biochemistry 
bids fair to become the new weapon. At the moment psy¬ 
chology is a fashionable basis of attack, but since it has a 
very elusive subject matter and no agreed technique with 
which to subdue this, it cannot yet be allowed the author¬ 
ity which belongs by achievement to the material sciences. 
From one side or another science has been repeatedly put 
before us as an intellectual attitude, a method of inquiry, 
and a body of tested knowledge, having an at least prima 
facie opposition to the spirit and content of religious belief. 

3 


4 The Christian Understanding of Man 

Is the opposition real and deep? If it is, which of the two 
is to be preferred? If it is not, how does the appearance of 
opposition arise? 

By the scientific account of man is in fact meant some¬ 
times the knowledge of man that is found within the 
sciences (knowledge scientifically evidenced), sometimes a 
speculative extension of this knowledge. The two must be 
sharply distinguished. The latter is a form of philosophy, 
but it is popularly accepted as scientific because it is based 
on science, is put forward in the name of science, and comes 
to us sometimes — by no means always — through scien¬ 
tists. It is difficult to state, for it is rather a body of sup¬ 
positions than a developed doctrine. It may fairly be 
summarized by saying that man can be sufficiently de¬ 
scribed and explained with nothing but the ideas and prin¬ 
ciples of the natural sciences, or at any rate that we have 
nothing but these at our disposal. A concrete expression 
of it by one of its most distinguished advocates will be the 
best illustration: 

That man is the product of causes which had no prevision 
of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his 
hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome 
of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no 
intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life 
beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devo¬ 
tion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human 
genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar 
system — all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet 
so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can 
hope to stand. 1 

What sort of life such a view of man — here very nobly 
and movingly stated — would require us to live is not at all 
clear. Russell himself would have us “ maintain our own 


Bertrand Russell, Philosophical Essays (1910), pp. 60 f. 


T. E. Jessop 5 

ideals against a hostile universe,” which is undoubtedly 
heroic and undoubtedly illogical, an unexcused and unex¬ 
amined dualism. Other advocates have other precepts 
ranging from the recommendation of the Christian ethic 
without its Christian grounds to the call for eugenic breed¬ 
ing or psychoanalytic catharsis. The aim is to exclude any 
religious view of man. A man’s significance and obliga¬ 
tions are exhausted in his relation to his fellows; there is 
no “ supernatural ” environment or order or person to pro¬ 
vide a higher explanation of his being, a higher object of 
obligation, and a higher ground for the obligations he is 
under anyhow as a member of society. 

Any examination of this philosophy of man must ob¬ 
viously begin with the properly scientific doctrine of man 
on which it is based. Of the latter I shall first give some 
samples, partly to give concreteness to the discussion but 
chiefly to show that it does appear to provide strong 
grounds for the philosophy; and then pass from statement 
of content to an analysis of its authority. Finally, I shall 
consider whether the authority which belongs to the doc¬ 
trine qua scientific remains when the doctrine is specula¬ 
tively generalized into a philosophy. 

i 

The background of the scientific view of man is the 
scientific view of the physical universe. It was in the new 
astronomy of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton that 
science gave the first shock to the religious conception of 
man. Before Copernicus the universe was conceived as a 
series of concentric crystalline spheres — the largest bear¬ 
ing the fixed stars, the rest each bearing a planet — with 
God encompassing the outermost one and with the earth at 
the center of them all. The most prominent positions, it 
will be noted, were occupied by God and man. Besides, 


6 The Christian Understanding of Man 

everything beyond the earth and its atmosphere was 
thought to be made of one ethereal substance and to be 
eternally regular in its operations, whereas the earth, made 
of the four “ elements,” was the one sphere of chance, 
change and decay. This Aristotelico-Ptolemaic astronomy, 
obviously adaptable to the Christian world view, received 
the sanction of the scholars of medieval Christendom. But 
when Newton, gathering and mathematically organizing 
the conclusions of his predecessors, had finished his work, 
we were shown a universe with neither assignable bound¬ 
aries nor an assignable center and with no distinction of 
stuff or law between its celestial and its terrestrial parts: 
the earth was thrust out of the center, the stars were seen to 
be themselves suns, and the orbits of the heavenly bodies 
were understood through the study of a swinging pendu¬ 
lum and a falling ball. Subsequent investigations have 
widened our conception of the immensity of the universe, 
emphasized the cosmic triviality of our earth, and con¬ 
firmed in astonishing detail the material and formal ho¬ 
mogeneity of the whole. The dawning of this new world 
view roused some of the thinkers of the Renaissance to pan¬ 
theistic intoxication; in the eighteenth century the mathe¬ 
matical systematization of it led to deism; and in the middle 
of the nineteenth, fortified by new triumphs in physics and 
chemistry, it supported a brief though influential material¬ 
ism. A more recent physics has substituted probability for 
the confident finalities of Buchner and Tyndall, and has 
deeply modified the Newtonian theory, but the modifica¬ 
tions are highly technical and so far as our present point is 
concerned leave the scheme essentially the same — the 
physical universe is describable and “ explicable ” through 
a mathematics which never uses the hypothesis of God, the 
earth is a trifle in it, and the whole career of man, being far 
shorter than that of the earth, less than a trifle. The simple 


T. E. Jessop 7 

picture which for centuries provided the cosmology of 
faith, investing the theater of man’s life with cosmic cen¬ 
trality and placing it under the irregular influence of a 
God just beyond the relatively near stars, has been de¬ 
stroyed by science. 

The next shock came from biology, within living mem¬ 
ory. The theory of evolution was directed against the age¬ 
long supposition of the fixity of living kinds — that rabbits 
have always been born of rabbits and monkeys of monkeys. 
Its extension to man was both antecedently probable and 
soon called for by special evidence. The evidence is cir¬ 
cumstantial, cumulative, convergent. Fundamentally it 
consists in showing that virtually continuous chains of only 
slightly differing structures between long extinct and pres¬ 
ent living things are not merely imaginable but largely 
verifiable in fossil remains. What the natural factors were 
that produced the successive differences — that is, how 
heritable novelties of structure and function arose — is 
still a matter of controversy. Darwin’s version of the evo¬ 
lutionary theory does not seem to touch effectively the 
question of originating factors; it is concerned chiefly with 
survival. The question answered by his doctrine of nat¬ 
ural selection was: how, taking a group of features as 
given, did the organisms that first got them come to es¬ 
tablish themselves as a self-perpetuating stock? If an in¬ 
dividual appears with features differing markedly from 
those of its species, it is not likely to survive if the new feat¬ 
ures place it at a disadvantage in that adjustment to envi¬ 
ronment which alone maintains life; and if they make it 
less able to win a mate, either by direct attraction or by 
combat with rivals, they and it would disappear together. 
Those types of organism survive which are equipped for 
the struggle on the one hand for individual existence, on 
the other hand for mates. The process of survival and 


8 The Christian Understanding of Man 

elimination has, of course, a different incidence from place 
to place and from time to time, following differences in 
the balance of environmental factors. 

All this has no less and no more reference to man than 
to any other living being. The formulae of the transforma¬ 
tion of species and the survival of the fittest cover every¬ 
thing that has a bodily life. The evidence of a man’s 
special affinity with the apes is of exactly the same kind as 
the evidence of the affinity of lions with cats and of rabbits 
with mice, that is, the presence of deep structural resem¬ 
blances. Until a quite late stage the human embryo has 
the same sequence of developing formations as the embryo 
of a gorilla or a chimpanzee; when adult it has the same 
sort of skeleton (even to the number of spinal vertebrae), 
a very similar arrangement of teeth (dentition has been 
found to be of great importance in zoological classifica¬ 
tion) , and a very similar brain. In skeleton, muscles and 
organs there seems to be no greater difference between man 
and gorilla than there is between the gorilla and the lower 
apes. To construct a zoological class which includes all 
the apes and yet excludes man would therefore be a howler, 
a classificatory scandal. And to regard the accumulation 
of anatomical and physiological similarities as merely coin¬ 
cidental, independent, would be to renounce the business 
of science. Some hypothesis has to be found. For the hy¬ 
pothesis of man’s community of descent with the other 
members of his zoological class the zoologist has the evi¬ 
dence for evolution in the other classes, the embryological 
similarities, and the approximation to the ape-like stock in 
the oldest skeletons of prehistoric man. 

The case for evolution rests on a huge mass of similari¬ 
ties and serial relationships for which a biological textbook 
must be consulted, and no one who is unwilling to work 
in some detail through this mass of interlocking details has 


T. E. Jessop 9 

any right to pass a public judgment upon it. To pick out 
from the general doctrine the one article that man arose 
from a subhuman stock and either except this from the 
theory or deny the whole theory because of this is to attack 
a large scientific issue from a ground which is both narrow 
and extraneous. Man’s sense of his significance is irrele¬ 
vant to biology, falling outside both the sphere of its prob¬ 
lems and the sphere of its evidence, for biology is only the 
study of the bodily structures, observable activities, and 
vital relations of all living things regarded simply as living; 
like each of the other sciences, it isolates its own field. The 
evolutionary theory was designed to meet, and must first be 
judged by, its success in solving or at least mitigating the 
problems within this field, and the persons competent to 
judge it have accepted it because it brings together facts 
which otherwise would be left in a heap, and relates more 
comprehensively and verifiably facts which hitherto had 
been related by mere static similarity; because the difficul¬ 
ties it in turn raises are both fewer and less important, 
within biology, than those it removes; and because it gives 
guidance and stimulus to research. These are the general 
marks of any good theory within any branch of inquiry. 

Zoologists, then, have shown us that we have descended 
from brutes. But they are as little blind as the rest of us to 
the immense distance that divides us from the highest of 
the brutes. What is it that makes man, for all his animality, 
a class apart? His erect posture, his consequently free fore¬ 
limbs making possible the fashioning and use of tools, and 
his large brain, are present with a difference of degree only 
in the higher apes. So long as we keep to the level of struc¬ 
ture we remain within the domain of zoological compari¬ 
son. Is mind, then, peculiar to man? The general body of 
competent opinion affirms that it is not. The opinion rests 
on the impossibility as yet of describing and explaining the 


io The Christian Understanding of Man 

total external behavior of many animals in purely physi¬ 
ological terms such as tropisms and reflexes activated by 
physico-chemical stimuli either from within or without; 
we cannot go far without terms like perception and emo¬ 
tion, which, of course, refer to a psychological order. In 
other words, some of their behavior shows so close a re¬ 
semblance to the simpler forms of human behavior as to 
give us reason for inferring that the mental factor known 
to be operative here is operative there also. Is there, how¬ 
ever, some one function of mind that only man possesses, 
for example, intelligence? If intelligence means the ability 
to behave appropriately in situations not completely pro¬ 
vided for by reflex and instinct, some animals below man 
certainly possess intelligence. Kohler’s experiments with 
chimpanzees amount to a demonstration of this, though 
they show that the most intelligent of brutes rise no higher 
than a three-year-old child. But if intelligence means free 
or abstract thinking, the conscious analysis of complex 
things and situations and the conscious recognition of their 
elements and relations in other contexts, it belongs to man 
alone. The clearest sign of abstract thought is speech: the 
two are invariably correlated, arise simultaneously, and 
develop pari passu. Man emerged when an animal spoke. 

Thought and speech are not, of course, man’s only pe¬ 
culiarities; and if speech were our only criterion we should 
never be able to get direct evidence whether prehistoric 
man was really man or not. Why, then, do we call him 
man? Because he could kindle fires, make and use tools, 
draw pictures on tusks and cavern walls, and because he 
buried his dead with attentions that can only be construed 
as an expression of belief in another life after the eclipse of 
this one. In a word, he had a culture, meaning by this or¬ 
ganized and persistent activities that require for their ex¬ 
planation developed mental powers and transmission not 


T. E. Jessop ii 

by animal heredity but by tradition; all almost certainly 
involving speech. The detailed and overwhelming simi¬ 
larities of man’s body to that of the anthropoid apes only 
serve to throw into more impressive relief these peculiari¬ 
ties of man’s behavior. 

Science gives a very distant date for the appearance of 
man. The literal interpretation of Genesis makes of man 
a primeval kind, originated at a stroke, and Archbishop 
Ussher’s computation dates his creation to six thousand 
years ago. Anthropologists date the first fairly certain re¬ 
mains of man to anywhere between a whole and half a 
million years ago, and the first traces of the anthropoid ape, 
a stock not ancestral to but collateral with man, to several 
million years earlier. Old as he is, then, man is a relatively 
late comer in the world. And, slow in appearing, he was 
slow in developing; for nearly the whole of the period 
since his emergence he remained at the prehistoric stage, 
rising no higher than the neolithic type of culture. To the 
slowness of this prehistoric era the swift development of 
historical times is an astonishing contrast. But the root of 
it all, slow or quick, is the supersession of reflex and instinct 
by thought, and the differentiation and refinement of emo¬ 
tion and desire which thought makes possible. Reflex and 
instinct are effective in an animal’s normal environment 
but inept outside of it. Conscious thought, on the other 
hand, does not have this fixity as the condition of its effi¬ 
ciency; it is stimulated by change of environment, and has 
proved itself able within very liberal limits to reverse the 
order characteristic of the biological realm by adapting the 
environment to itself. In addition, it has devised a new 
mode of transmission to succeeding generations: man can 
embody and perpetuate what he has learned in words and 
works and institutions. It is this preservation and accumu¬ 
lation of achievements through the generations that gives 


12 The Christian Understanding of Man 

to the pace of culture its increasing acceleration. Man 
should develop more in the next than he has done in the 
past ten thousand years. 

The distance that divides the modern man from the neo¬ 
lithic man of nearly ten thousand years ago, and the vaster 
distance that divides even the latter from the highest of the 
brutes, is a measure of our dignity within the natural order 
open to scientific investigation. The scientific study of 
man, far from denying this dignity, has confirmed it, ana¬ 
lyzed it, traced the history of it, and discovered some of its 
promoting and obstructing conditions. 

But only some of those conditions. In man’s dignity it 
finds no cosmic significance; that is, such remarkable phe¬ 
nomena as art, social institutions, morality, religion and 
science itself are not taken as data revelatory of an aspect, 
sui generis, of the ultimate nature of things. They are 
interpreted as simply resultants of the physico-chemical 
and biological factors in the comprehension of which 
science has won its spurs. This for several reasons: firstly, 
because these factors are relatively well understood and are 
still open to investigation; secondly, because of the cosmo¬ 
logical assumption that there was a time when there was 
nothing but physical elements in very simple combina¬ 
tions; and thirdly, because of the general postulate of the 
causal continuity of nature. It must be admitted that the 
attempts that have so far been made to exhibit how the cul¬ 
tural behavior of humans can have evolved by “ natural 
necessity ” out of animal behavior, and this out of physico¬ 
chemical reactions, have been too speculative to deserve to 
be called scientific. Nevertheless there is a mass of evi¬ 
dence, not easy to organize logically, pointing to the earth- 
bound nature of man. Much of it does but amplify, clarify 
and more widely confirm what is familiar to us in the ordi¬ 
nary course of experience. We all know, for example, that 


T. E. Jessop 13 

it is by an animal process that human individuals are gen¬ 
erated, and that the generation is often accidental in the 
grave sense of being unintended. When science adds that 
we begin our life not as infants but as tiny and brutish 
germcells, it adds plausibility to its theory, which has 
abundant evidence of its own, that our race originated in a 
brutish stock. We are learning that we inherit our stature, 
the color of our hair and eyes, and other bodily features, 
by the same mechanism, operating with the same regular¬ 
ity, by which mice and sweet peas inherit their color. Like 
animals, we have to eat, and sleep, and exercise in order to 
live at all. We know too that we hold our life by material 
threads which material agencies can only too easily sever: a 
flash of lightning, a sunless summer or a severe winter, or 
a few microscopic germs can carry us off without the slight¬ 
est respect for our super-animal attainments. And these 
attainments sometimes leave us; in panic and extreme 
anger and hunger and pain we can and do sink back to the 
level of animal behavior — except that we are aware of 
the lapse and can condemn it. 

But our specifically human mental life? That the char¬ 
acter as well as the existence of this is not merely connected 
with but conditioned by the body is a commonplace of ex¬ 
perience. Catarrh impairs the memory; indigestion deter¬ 
mines a mood, and when chronic one’s philosophy; and a 
tumor on the brain may bring the mental ruin we call in¬ 
sanity. Of such bondage to the body science has enlarged 
the tale. One of the most interesting of recent investiga¬ 
tions deals with the functions of a certain type of gland, 
called ductless or endocrine, which pours secretions into 
the blood. Cretinism, a form of infantile idiocy, has been 
known for some time to be due to congenital deficiency in 
the secretion of the thyroid gland. More recently an inti¬ 
mate relation has been discovered between the suprarenal 


14 The Christian Understanding of Man 

glands (above the kidneys) and our emotional life. In an 
angering situation they are stimulated, and far-reaching 
changes — such as tenseness of the muscles, changes in the 
pulse and pressure and distribution of the blood, dilatation 
of the pupils — of which anger is largely the mental rever¬ 
beration, are due to the action of the suprarenal hormone. 
It seems likely that all emotions have glandular conditions, 
at any rate so far as their bodily accompaniments are con¬ 
cerned — and any emotion without its characteristic bodily 
accompaniment would be so weak and colorless as to have 
neither the feel nor the efficacy of an emotion. Of course, 
the endocrine glands do not work alone; they condition 
and are conditioned by one another and the other struc¬ 
tures of the body. Investigation of them is still immature. 
But enough is known to oblige us to regard them as power¬ 
ful determinants of emotion, mood and temperament. To 
be concrete, a person who finds it easy, without prior disci¬ 
pline, to be cheerful and patient, has probably a fortunate 
glandular endowment. Corpulent people, for instance, 
are usually of a happy disposition, and corpulence, when 
natural, seems to be due to the glandular economy. Much 
of the material of the moral life, then, appears to rest on a 
physiological accident. There is a cheerfulness which is 
not a virtue, and an irascibility which is only a disease — 
a scientific ground for the extension of charity. Still, this 
subjection of ours to our glands may be overstressed. It is 
not the direct action of circumstance on the suprarenals 
that makes us angry, but our interpretation of the circum¬ 
stance; the glands are activated by a mental act. Never¬ 
theless, it seems probable that people who are characteris¬ 
tically emotional and those who are characteristically emo¬ 
tionless are what they are because of glandular unbalance. 
Like other physiological structures, the endocrine glands 
partly serve the mind and partly determine it. 


T. E. Jessop 15 

When we leave this borderland between physiology and 
psychology for psychology itself, we leave the realm of gen¬ 
eral agreement for one of general controversy. It is not yet 
able to stand as an equal alongside the older natural 
sciences I have been drawing upon, for its exponents differ 
not only about specific points but also about such funda¬ 
mental matters as its boundaries, methods and criteria. 
It is still an incoherent aggregate of many theories. In 
consequence it is meaningless to appeal, as is now fashion¬ 
able, to the “ modern psychological theory of man.” 
There isn’t one. Most people appear to mean by the 
phrase the psychoanalytic theory. This also is not one but 
many, being torn by major domestic controversies; and it 
is still far more a speculative (if not fanciful) handmaid to 
medicine than a science. Psychology deserves, indeed, to 
be considered, but it can be neither presented nor exam¬ 
ined as the older sciences can be. This short chapte-r, to 
maintain any sort of unity, must omit it; and it must omit 
also, for somewhat similar reasons, the rich material of the 
science of history. 


11 

A summary statement of scientific doctrines is a poor 
way of bringing out their real worth, for summaries are 
dogmatic and so far unscientific. The cogency of science 
appears not in its gross conclusions but in the detailed 
linkages that lead up to and establish them. To accept a 
summary without knowing what makes it credible is to be 
credulous, and the readiness with which the public will 
now believe almost anything if it be called scientific is mak¬ 
ing this age, in which science most prevails, the most un¬ 
scientific age of all. Of course, other ages have had their 
credulities, but to be credulous of that which exists to dis¬ 
pel credulity is the peculiar cultural vulgarity of these days. 


14 The Christian Understanding of Man 

glands (above the kidneys) and our emotional life. In an 
angering situation they are stimulated, and far-reaching 
changes — such as tenseness of the muscles, changes in the 
pulse and pressure and distribution of the blood, dilatation 
of the pupils — of which anger is largely the mental rever¬ 
beration, are due to the action of the suprarenal hormone. 
It seems likely that all emotions have glandular conditions, 
at any rate so far as their bodily accompaniments are con¬ 
cerned — and any emotion without its characteristic bodily 
accompaniment would be so weak and colorless as to have 
neither the feel nor the efficacy of an emotion. Of course, 
the endocrine glands do not work alone; they condition 
and are conditioned by one another and the other struc¬ 
tures of the body. Investigation of them is still immature. 
But enough is known to oblige us to regard them as power¬ 
ful determinants of emotion, mood and temperament. To 
be concrete, a person who finds it easy, without prior disci¬ 
pline, to be cheerful and patient, has probably a fortunate 
glandular endowment. Corpulent people, for instance, 
are usually of a happy disposition, and corpulence, when 
natural, seems to be due to the glandular economy. Much 
of the material of the moral life, then, appears to rest on a 
physiological accident. There is a cheerfulness which is 
not a virtue, and an irascibility which is only a disease — 
a scientific ground for the extension of charity. Still, this 
subjection of ours to our glands may be overstressed. It is 
not the direct action of circumstance on the suprarenals 
that makes us angry, but our interpretation of the circum¬ 
stance; the glands are activated by a mental act. Never¬ 
theless, it seems probable that people who are characteris¬ 
tically emotional and those who are characteristically emo¬ 
tionless are what they are because of glandular unbalance. 
Like other physiological structures, the endocrine glands 
partly serve the mind and partly determine it. 


T. E. Jessop 15 

When we leave this borderland between physiology and 
psychology for psychology itself, we leave the realm of gen¬ 
eral agreement for one of general controversy. It is not yet 
able to stand as an equal alongside the older natural 
sciences I have been drawing upon, for its exponents differ 
not only about specific points but also about such funda¬ 
mental matters as its boundaries, methods and criteria. 
It is still an incoherent aggregate of many theories. In 
consequence it is meaningless to appeal, as is now fashion¬ 
able, to the “ modern psychological theory of man.” 
There isn’t one . Most people appear to mean by the 
phrase the psychoanalytic theory. This also is not one but 
many, being torn by major domestic controversies; and it 
is still far more a speculative (if not fanciful) handmaid to 
medicine than a science. Psychology deserves, indeed, to 
be considered, but it can be neither presented nor exam¬ 
ined as the older sciences can be. This short chapter, to 
maintain any sort of unity, must omit it; and it must omit 
also, for somewhat similar reasons, the rich material of the 
science of history. 


11 

A summary statement of scientific doctrines is a poor 
way of bringing out their real worth, for summaries are 
dogmatic and so far unscientific. The cogency of science 
appears not in its gross conclusions but in the detailed 
linkages that lead up to and establish them. To accept a 
summary without knowing what makes it credible is to be 
credulous, and the readiness with which the public will 
now believe almost anything if it be called scientific is mak¬ 
ing this age, in which science most prevails, the most un¬ 
scientific age of all. Of course, other ages have had their 
credulities, but to be credulous of that which exists to dis¬ 
pel credulity is the peculiar cultural vulgarity of these days. 


16 The Christian Understanding of Man 

If science could communicate to the public less of its con¬ 
tent and more of its standards of thinking, the talk about 
the conflict of religion and science would be raised to a 
decent level of effort and insight. 

To discover the authority of science we must ask the 
question what it is that makes a scientific conclusion scien¬ 
tific. What is meant by a scientific doctrine? Not a par¬ 
ticular body of results, since these are ever changing, and 
not, as is popularly supposed, whatever scientists say even in 
their professional moments. Science is a spirit articulated 
in a set of methods and criteria and such knowledge as 
exemplifies and satisfies these. Take an intense curiosity 
and redeem it of flabbiness and waywardness by concen¬ 
trating it on a demarcated field of objects; combine with it 
a refusal to conclude without evidence; refine this demand 
for evidence into a conscious realization of what evidence 
consists in and of the need for method as well as patience to 
reach it: and you have the mentality that creates science. It 
is the exercise of this mentality that makes a man a scientist, 
not the mere possession of knowledge which that mentality 
in other minds has won. 

Objectively, the fundamental marks of science are clar¬ 
ity, system and evidence. These are a trinity of cognitive 
values, ideals or ends implicit in the cognitive impulse 
when this is considered in itself, divorced from the influ¬ 
ence of emotion and the needs of action. They are the 
marks of science in a sense of this term wider than is now 
usually understood; the limitation will be made shortly. 

Clarity is definiteness, unambiguity. In a fully scientific 
inquiry every important term is either defined or referred 
to a definite datum. Consider the striking contrast be¬ 
tween a layman’s notion of common salt and the chemist’s 
notion of it as composed of the elements sodium and chlor¬ 
ine in a certain proportion; or the orderly explicitness of 


T. E. Jessop 17 

the zoologist’s conception of an animal as a material body 
that has sensitivity, grows and maintains itself and repro¬ 
duces its kind by converting organic compounds into its 
own substance and by reconverting them into energy and 
waste. Probably the most perfect conceptual clarity is to 
be found in mathematics, and it is the ease with which the 
subject matter of physics lends itself to mathematical state¬ 
ment (through measurement) that has made physics the 
clearest of the sciences that deal with empirical fact. Clar¬ 
ity is required because it is the first condition of efficiency 
— in obscurity and vagueness thinking loses its way. Start 
on a clear plane and you have every chance of remaining 
on it; begin in a muddle and you will probably end in one. 
For this reason the scientist will sometimes procure a defini¬ 
tion at almost any cost, even at the cost of making one 
arbitrarily. Adequacy can come only at the end of the in¬ 
quiry, but the beginning must be at least clear. Those 
who cannot see this, who cannot sympathize with the scien¬ 
tist’s frequent preference, for reasons of method, of defi¬ 
niteness to adequacy, of clarity to truth, lack a primary 
qualification for the appreciation of science. The charac¬ 
teristic way to clarity is analysis and abstraction: a complex 
phenomenon is split up into its elements, which are then 
studied piecemeal and so far abstractly. If any are confus¬ 
ing they are ignored for a while. When, for instance, the 
scientific study of motion was begun, friction and air resist¬ 
ance were left out as disturbing factors and not reintro¬ 
duced until the laws of motion in a supposititious vacuum 
had been worked out. In its early stages every science has 
to make such abstractions, such simplifications, for the sake 
of clarity. It is still impossible for economics, for example, 
to be at once clear and concrete. 

Clarity achieved, system becomes possible (since only a 
determinate proposition has determinate relations), and 


18 The Christian Understanding of Man 

the achievement of system is the perfection of clarity. That 
clarity and system are the really fundamental marks of 
science must be stressed, for there is a widespread suppo¬ 
sition, curiously silly, that loyalty to fact is the mark and 
monopoly of science. It is, of course, the mark of nothing 
more than common sense, of which scientists have no mo¬ 
nopoly. Where facts are concerned, what distinguishes a 
scientist’s knowledge from an intelligent layman’s is not 
his adherence to them but his organization of them. Cer¬ 
tainly the long tradition of self-conscious thought has al¬ 
ways meant by a science a body of propositions that stand 
together by intrinsic logical bonds. This is why pure 
mathematics ranks as a science, although it may not have a 
single fact in it; and why theology is a science, or at any 
rate was in the hands of such logical masters as Aquinas and 
Calvin, although its dominant content is not fact in the 
usual sense of the word. An intellectual conscience which 
cannot bear to leave anything in isolation, unrelated, un¬ 
derlies them all. It works through generalization and de¬ 
duction repeated on mounting planes — Tycho Brahe es¬ 
tablishing the primary facts of planetary motion, Kepler 
discovering laws from which they can be deduced, Newton 
rising to more general laws from which Kepler’s and yet 
other laws can all be derived. As a science advances the 
idea of system becomes increasingly operative, and as it 
gains dominance it acts not simply as an organizing concept 
but also as a source of evidence: when laws or theories each 
of which has its own empirical grounds are seen to be con¬ 
vergent, interlocking, or all deducible from a more general 
law, their systematic interconnection is regarded as addi¬ 
tional evidence for them, compensating for any deficiency 
in the empirical evidence for each taken separately. The 
strength of a theory lies as much in its relation to other 
theories as in its relation to the facts it immediately covers. 


T. E. Jessop 19 

All laws of fact are imperfectly established by fact, but 
when they fall together into one system their amenability 
to logical fellowship is a further symptom of their truth. It 
is for this reason that the piecemeal criticism of an ad¬ 
vanced science such as physics or of a widely based and 
widely organizing theory such as that of evolution, is unin¬ 
telligent. Only of undeveloped sciences such as psychology 
and anthropology — undeveloped because the basis of ac¬ 
credited fact is too small or still unclear, or the higher or¬ 
ganization of it wanting or too speculative — is the piece¬ 
meal method of criticism at all fair. The protagonists of 
religion have not always been mindful of this. Always 
criticism should remember the double obligation of a sci¬ 
ence of fact — its fidelity to system as well as to fact. 

Clarity and system are the constitutive ideals of science 
as such. It is they that convert knowledge into scientific 
knowledge. Any narrower definition of science would ex¬ 
clude pure mathematics and would thereby be paradoxical. 
But the degree to which clarity and system are realized in 
the several branches of expert study is very different. Why? 
Not because of differing range but because of differing kind 
of subject matter. This introduces the third ideal, evi¬ 
dence. The differences of subject matter that have forced 
us to have not science but sciences, the really divisive differ¬ 
ences, are differences in kind of evidence. The deepest 
way of distinguishing mathematics, physics, psychology and 
ethics is not to name their respective subject matters but to 
say that while all require logical evidence (this being 
largely, if not entirely, synonymous with system) pure 
mathematics requires nothing else, physics must have sen¬ 
sory evidence, psychology must be content with a more 
fugitive and less patent kind of evidence, while ethics seeks 
evidence of value. Each of these sciences is typical of a 
group, and the groups may for convenience of identifica- 


20 The Christian Understanding of Man 

tion be called respectively abstract, objective natural, sub¬ 
jective natural and philosophical sciences. 

Now by the scientific doctrine of man is usually meant 
so much of the knowledge of man as is gained through the 
sciences of the second group, namely, physics, chemistry, 
biology, and certain derivatives or mixtures of these (e.g., 
geography). When we say that their specifically defining 
feature is the admission of only sensory and logical (includ¬ 
ing mathematical) evidence we mean that the only data 
they will recognize are perceptual data and the only infer¬ 
ences they will allow from them are logical ones. An ob¬ 
jective natural science is the study of a definite field of per¬ 
ceptual existents under the ideal of logical system. The 
nature of its authority follows from this definition. For 
the distinctive feature of both sensory and logical evidence 
is that they are public, public in the twofold sense that they 
are accessible to everybody and that they are independent 
of private prejudice; and it is this patent publicity which 
makes possible that fruitful cooperative study and that ex¬ 
posure of assertions to an irresistible check which are among 
the most striking features of scientific work. What is 
square to you is square to me. Area and volume, density 
and weight, the pattern and dimensions of the solar system, 
the structure of the human brain and its relation to the 
brain of an ape, whether a particular gland is at work when 
we are angry — all these are questions that can only be set 
and only be settled in the long run through direct percep¬ 
tual vision. Personal conviction and idiosyncrasies of ex¬ 
perience are irrelevant. Every statement about the per¬ 
ceptual aspect of a perceptual thing is in principle, and to 
a remarkable degree in practice, susceptible of clinching 
verification and refutation. The accumulating agreement 
within and the authority of the objective natural sciences 
are due to their keeping to the perceptual, to the sphere of 


21 


T. E. Jessop 

public demonstrability. Any form of inquiry that admits 
nonperceptual data and any verification other than per¬ 
ception and logical coherence departs from the type of sci¬ 
ence set by physics, chemistry and biology, and to that ex¬ 
tent is scientific in a sense that lacks the authority attaching 
to these. Psychology, and the social sciences in so far as 
they are directed upon or presuppose mental experiences, 
fall greatly below the rigorous standard of the material sci¬ 
ences because the facts from which they start and to which 
for verification they return are indefeasibly private: in a 
case of dispute a thought, emotion or impulse cannot be 
torn out of the arcanum of a mind and set for common in¬ 
spection in front of the disputing investigators. And the 
impossibility of settling questions of value in the way that 
questions of fact can be settled, the deep and persistent dis¬ 
agreement about them, and that intimate, perhaps essential, 
connection of values with emotions which makes the impar¬ 
tial study of them supremely difficult, remove the philo¬ 
sophical disciplines (in which clear, systematic and evi¬ 
denced knowledge of values is sought) still further from 
the type of science exemplified most fully in physics. The 
popular convention which means by a scientific conclusion 
a conclusion that settles the question arose out of and is 
relevant to this type only. 

Using the term science henceforward to cover this type 
only, we have to define it and appraise it as clarity, system 
and public verifiability pursued through centuries with 
international cooperation and persisting when all other 
forms of cooperation have broken down. Its content is so 
much of knowledge about sensory objects as can at a given 
time be established and organized with universal agree¬ 
ment. In spirit and content alike it is a spiritual achieve¬ 
ment of the first order. Its most obvious glory is the con¬ 
trol it gives over natural forces: it has made habitable parts 


22 The Christian Understanding of Man 

of the earth that formerly were waste or pestilential, made 
the air and under the sea navigable, enabled us to travel a 
couple of thousand miles in a day and send a message round 
the earth in a fraction of a second, mitigated the pains and 
prolonged the span of man’s life, increased the supply of 
his necessities and invented a host of comforts and enter¬ 
tainments. Yet these applications of scientific knowledge 
are less remarkable than the knowledge itself, the knowl¬ 
edge that can reach millions of light years into the sky (a 
single light year is nearly six million million miles) and 
penetrate to the ultra-microscopic. Most remarkable of all 
are the rigorous cognitive ideal, the vast imagination, the 
technical ingenuity, the minute care, the unwearying pa¬ 
tience, the superb detachment, the raceless and timeless 
fellowship of thinking, out of which that knowledge has 
sprung. The scientific enterprise is exceeding precious, 
too precious to disparage in the name of anything, even of 
religion. It is indeed as precious as religion itself, in the 
sense that it is an equally authentic expression of mind; a 
source of light and life, and brings healing in its wings. 
“ The world was made,” said Sir Thomas Browne, “ to be 
inhabited by beasts, but studied and contemplated by man: 
’tis the debt of our reason we owe unto God, and the hom¬ 
age we pay for not being beasts.” 2 But this fine saying has 
reference to theology and philosophy as well as to science 
in the narrow sense, of which there was little in Browne’s 
day. 

Small wonder that the Christian attitude toward science 
has not been so prevalently negative as it is often repre¬ 
sented to be. The very vanguard of science has had in it 
in every generation men of avowed and sincere religious 
conviction. In Britain the names of Newton, Priestley and 
Faraday at once spring to mind. Those who emphasize the 
2 Religio Medici (1643) * First Part, sec. 13. 


T. E. Jessop 23 

religious resistance to science tend to forget that Coper¬ 
nicus was a canon, Mendel an abbot, and Malthus an An¬ 
glican priest. It has been said with forgivable exaggeration 
— forgivable because provoked — that if science had been 
left to the “ ungodly ” it would be much less advanced than 
it is. As a sublime and sustained effort of the spirit it has 
been congenial to countless Christians; the universities 
were opened to it before they were secularized; and the 
church corporately and her members severally have re¬ 
peatedly thanked God for it. When the attitude of the 
church toward science has been negative, there have usually 
been other reasons besides the apparent incompatibility of 
a given theory with Christian dogma. It is a lack of his¬ 
torical sense that makes us suppose that the ideas of Coper¬ 
nicus and Galileo, for example, should have been as obvi¬ 
ous to the older ecclesiastics as they are to us today; and the 
ignorance of the Dark Ages is still often laid entirely at the 
door of the church as though little were due to the eastward 
movement of Greek science, the collapse of Rome, and the 
dominance of new peoples too barbarian either to desire 
science or to understand it. Some chapters in the history 
of the relations between religion and science badly need to 
be rewritten. 


hi 

Is the sense of conflict which has developed around these 
two equally natural expressions of the human spirit, science 
and religion, justified, and if it is, is it really science, or 
instead something which the public confuses with science, 
that is inimical to the religious view of man? For the dis¬ 
cussion of this problem the preceding analysis of the nature 
of science was necessary, to set the stage. We have seen, 
first, how science considered in its broad traditional sense as 
expert thinking is distinguished from lay or popular think- 


24 The Christian Understanding of Man 

ing; second, that within expert thinking there are impor¬ 
tant differences of kind, based on differences in the kind of 
evidence admitted; and third, what the defining marks are 
of that special kind to which within the last hundred years 
the designation “ science ” has come to be almost exclu¬ 
sively restricted. The unity of science even in this nar¬ 
rower sense is an ideal not yet even remotely approximated 
to, and one of the reasons is that not all its forms have 
reached anything like the same level of certainty and clarity. 
When we free ourselves from the journalism in which sci¬ 
ence has become involved we see that in respect of authority 
its different types have to be considered separately. In 
scientific circles this is freely, often tartly, recognized: for 
example, there are physicists, chemists and statisticians who 
refuse to regard anything in biology as scientific that is not 
expressed in precise quantitative terms, and, of course, 
there are biologists and “ behaviorists ” who attach no scien¬ 
tific value whatever to introspective psychology. Since, 
then, by the ethics of controversy, it is right to take a rival 
theory in its strongest form, I have taken as the scientific 
doctrine of man that which is found in the physico-chemi¬ 
cal and biological sciences. Is there any conflict between 
this doctrine and the religious doctrine of man? 

In treating this question there are several possibilities 
of procedure. We could take the scientific doctrines one 
by one and try to pick holes in them. This seems to me to 
be tactless and fruitless, tactless because the content of the 
sciences is changing rapidly and also because only a physi¬ 
cist can directly criticize a particular doctrine of physics 
(and so on), and fruitless because I do not believe that 
man’s true nature and the possibility of God are to be 
found in the gaps within the sciences. It is better to con¬ 
sider the whole kind of knowledge exhibited in science, 
and to ask whether its content, and with this its authority, 


T. E. Jessop 25 

covers specifically religious matters. The analysis in the 
preceding section has been badly expressed if it has not 
shown that that very clarity, system and cogency which give 
to science its obvious authority rest entirely on the exclu¬ 
sion from science of any consideration of transcendental 
entities and of values. It keeps to sensory facts, analogues 
of sensory facts, mathematics and logic. Why? First be¬ 
cause clarity and system are more attainable in a limited 
and homogeneous field than in an unlimited and hetero¬ 
geneous one, and second because the sensory field lends 
itself with unique facility to public demonstration. Homo¬ 
geneity makes possible the standardization of method; sen- 
soriness provides a plain and unescapable point for both 
the beginning and the end of an inquiry, defining both a 
patent kind of problem and an irresistible form of solution. 
It is the consistent acceptance of these limitations that gives 
science its strength. Whatever falls beyond them is not de¬ 
nied but simply ignored. Science is a technique, and so 
much knowledge as the following of that technique brings. 
The religious interpretation of man is simply left out of it 
as being foreign to its technique. The scientific and the 
religious interpretations are reached from distinct points 
of view and by different methods. In principle, they are 
complementary. 

But are they in fact antagonistic? Are their contents in¬ 
compatible? They certainly have been in the past, but for 
an unfortunate reason, namely, that religious apologists 
have included in their interpretation statements the proof 
or disproof of which is achievable only by scientific meth¬ 
ods — for example, that the earth was made in seven days, 
that it is but six thousand years old, that man’s brain is 
thoroughly different from that of any other known crea¬ 
ture, and that the male skeleton lacks the rib which was 
taken from Adam for the fashioning of Eve. Now the bril- 


26 The Christian Understanding of Man 

liant success of the physico-chemical and biological sciences 
all but proves that their methods of dealing with their type 
of subject matter are the right ones for that type, that is, 
for whatever is or would under favorable conditions be 
sensorily perceived. I mean that any question about struc¬ 
tures and relations within the sensory order of fact is a 
scientific question, to be defined and solved by the methods 
and criteria evolved by the natural sciences, without inter¬ 
ference from the side of religious interest even when the 
question is about something now beyond direct observa¬ 
tion, such as the beginning of the earth or the natural fac¬ 
tors involved in man’s origin and early development. We 
cannot leave present facts to science and reserve remote 
ones for theology when both sets of facts are of the same 
order. Any theorizing about what cannot in fact be per¬ 
ceived involves conjecture, but when the matter is in prin¬ 
ciple or nature perceptible the conjecture is better, is re¬ 
sponsible in the sense that it is open to a generalizable test, 
when it is guided throughout by what we do perceive. It is 
by a reasonable extension of this principle that we have 
come to consider the date and authorship of the books of 
the Bible to be questions of scholarship, not of religion, 
the only objective and cooperative way of investigating 
them being the one followed in like questions about any 
other anonymous, pseudonymous, and undated books. A 
religious man’s philology, textual criticism “ higher ” or 
“ lower,” and his natural science, should be the same as 
anyone else’s. But the truth or otherwise of the Bible’s 
transcendental affirmations and of its and your and my 
spiritual values are extra-scientific matters; and so too are 
the questions whether the natural process of evolution was 
initiated and is supported by a cosmic purpose, whether 
man’s mind is simply coeval with his body, and whether his 
values have any abiding validity. A form of investigation 


T. E. Jessop 27 

that does not, and cannot without forfeiting its peculiar 
virtues, study these, cannot pronounce on them. 

If this definition of a meum and a tuum within the gen¬ 
eral controversy had always been appreciated, we should 
not have had theologians making ab extra judgments on 
matters that require scientific competence, or, conversely, 
scientists illicitly lending the prestige of science to opinions 
about matters which science cannot assimilate to its tech¬ 
nique. Much of the overt conflict has consisted in mutual 
trespass. Science and religion have different fields, or, 
where they overlap, different tasks. I am not sure that a 
direct contradiction can arise between them. 

IV 

But they are not disembodied things. They live in the 
minds of men, and men can contradict one another. The 
real conflict is between two human attitudes or biases. We 
may now leave science proper and examine the scientific 
bias — a mentality, not a doctrine, and therefore difficult 
to define and argue against, so that in dealing with it argu¬ 
mentatively I shall at times have to harden it into a doc¬ 
trine. It is the mentality of the man who has become so 
habituated to or fascinated by scientific methods and stand¬ 
ards that he either refuses altogether to carry the business 
of thinking beyond the natural sciences, or, if he does, finds 
himself unable to adapt his way of thinking to the peculi¬ 
arities of the new subject matter. The first of these two 
forms only barely deserves to be mentioned. In the nine¬ 
teenth century, when scientists were fighting for recogni¬ 
tion, it formulated itself in the dogma that the scientific 
form of knowledge is the only form, everything that cannot 
fit into it being just unknowable. This agnosticism of the 
nonperceptual is foolish, because when a man steps out of 
theory into life he has to repudiate it. In the actual busi- 


28 The Christian Understanding of Man 

ness of living we are unable to treat ideals and value judg¬ 
ments as mere opinion and all examination of them as idle 
guesswork. We do and must distinguish between respon¬ 
sible and irresponsible action and thinking upon action, 
and the only name I can find for apprehension that is more 
than guessing or private opinion is not ignorance but 
knowledge. Fortunately, complete agnosticism about 
everything outside empirical fact has ceased to be fashion¬ 
able or even respectable. 

The second form of the scientific bias is the enduring 
one. The possessor of it knows he has left science proper 
behind, that he is transferring its methods to an outer field 
in which they can never be completely carried out, but he 
feels that it is better to be imperfectly scientific than to 
leave the scientific way altogether. The instinct is sound, 
for we leave that way at our peril, the peril of falling into 
egoism and Schwarmerei (though the best things usually 
lie in the perilous regions). The result is — when articu¬ 
lated, which is rare — a philosophy, which, to avoid coining 
a word, I shall call naturalism. Its general content appears 
to be that the material universe needs nothing but material, 
at any rate purposeless, factors for its explanation; that 
man is simply the creature of these factors and is completely 
destroyed by them; that his values are at best biological 
conveniences, entirely relative to his time and circum¬ 
stance; and that every trace of his achievements will one 
day be annihilated. With such a philosophy no Christian 
can be friendly. This is the so-called science with which 
religion is and must for ever be in conflict. We must ex¬ 
amine its grounds. 

The scientist who carries his bias into the larger field 
tends to deal with the* transcendental by the simple process 
of denying it. The artificially closed system — that is, 
closed by definition and restriction of method — of his sci- 


T. E. Jessop 29 

ence is now regarded as naturally and finally closed. The 
reason appears to be a complete satisfaction with the scien¬ 
tific way of explaining phenomena by factors within their 
own order. He just cannot see that anything else is re¬ 
quired for the explanation of, e.g., the astronomical world 
when its plan has been discovered and shown to follow 
from the laws of geometry and mechanics: space, time, and 
energy being what they are, the world could not help being 
what it is. Since the “ secondary ” causes account for the 
facts, the search for “ more ultimate ” causes is simply not 
called for. What could cause motion but a force, or rest 
but forces in equilibrium? The natural order explains 
itself. Not that every detail has yet made itself clear, but 
that whatever has revealed its ground has revealed only a 
natural ground, a ground immanent in its own order and 
entirely sufficient. 

My answer to this will come later. Here I can only note 
that there is a marked movement away from this attitude 
among the leaders of physical science, of the science which 
created it and gave it all its strictest reasons. In other 
words, the reasons for it are becoming out of date. The 
radical reinterpretations effected or required in physics 
and astronomy by the relativity and quantum theories are 
bringing about the admission that the strictest scientific ex¬ 
planations are too much infected with arbitrariness and 
abstractness to be really true, that the very type of explana¬ 
tion is subjective and not merely incomplete. Very oddly, 
there is in biology an increasing effort to reduce specifically 
biological laws to the laws of that physics for which dimin¬ 
ishing claims are being made. 

Another habit which gives a characteristic bias to “ scien¬ 
tific ” philosophy is the practice of conceiving everything 
complex as simply the resultant of its elements. If you 
spend your life analyzing, it is natural that you should at- 


30 The Christian Understanding of Man 

tribute to the technique a wider applicability, and to its 
results a greater weight, than they can bear. Here again, 
however, a reaction is setting in within science itself. In 
physics the analysis of space into points and of time into 
instants has given way to the analysis of space-time into 
point-instants — still analysis, but refusing to go further 
than a conjunction and thereby repudiating the old prin¬ 
ciple of analyzing until the conceptually simple is reached. 
In biology the unity of the living organism is being stressed, 
the effect of the whole on the parts being recognized almost 
as much as the contribution of the parts to the whole. And 
in psychology it is being found more fruitful to examine 
the unitary pattern, the purposive organization, of a piece 
of experience or behavior than to follow the old way of 
analyzing a state of mind into sensations, images, meanings 
and whatnot. In the sphere of specifically human creations 
the method of analysis is often merely inept, the results 
being irrelevant or trivial even when they are true. The 
least illuminating thing you can say about a cathedral is 
that it consists of pillars, vaulting ribs and connecting walls, 
and these of sandstone, this of quartz, this of silicon and 
oxygen, and these of protons and electrons. Add even the 
physical pattern (the statics of it) and you still fail to de¬ 
fine the nature of a cathedral; you must bring in the pur¬ 
pose or end of it all. Neither are poems and music under¬ 
stood through analysis into letters and notes; the wholes 
are prior, in the sense that the elements derive their sig¬ 
nificance from them, not vice versa. Students of language, 
by the way, generally agree that the sentence is prior to the 
word, the latter arising out of the decomposition of the 
former, not the former out of the composition of pre-exist¬ 
ent words. Few if any things are understandable as the 
resultants of their parts. They are more than the stuff they 
are made of — for the analytic interest all too easily mate- 


T. E. Jessop 31 

rializes its objects, reducing cathedrals to stone, music to 
sound, and mind to body or an effluvium of this. Some¬ 
times a misgiving appears, as when it is said that the analysis 
of matter into points or fields of electro-magnetic force has 
brought it nearer to mind — as though it were grossness 
that made matter matter, and thinness that made mind 
mind. It is pathetic to hear the eager echo in religious 
circles of this mentalizing of matter by the materialization 
of mind. 

The scientific interest in origins is another habit which 
becomes a bias when pressed beyond the boundaries of 
natural science. A genetic inquiry, like an analytic one, 
may issue in truth without relevance. To assign an origin 
is often nothing more than to assign an origin; I mean that 
to answer the question how a thing began may answer no 
other question. Yet frequently one finds the assumption 
that it does answer other questions. For instance, I have 
seen it written that because religion began with fear (a 
dogmatic premise) it is fear. The principle of this sort of 
thinking, which is all too rife nowadays, is that a thing is 
what it sprang from, and if we accept it here we should ac¬ 
cept it elsewhere and hold that an oak is an acorn, and man 
simply an animal. It is also written that because religion 
was spanked into me — against my rule I am straying into 
psychology — my religion is based on fear. The principle 
here is that the basis of a belief is the emotion or circum¬ 
stance that first evoked it, which is an elementary confusion 
between causes and reasons and which, generalized, would 
compel us to find the basis of nearly all our believings, sci¬ 
entific ones not excepted, in the behests (with their cor¬ 
poral sanctions) of our parents, nurses and teachers. If 
religion is fear, science is magic; and spanking has propa¬ 
gated science as well as religion. Arguments that cut both 
ways are useless. Behind these howlers arising out of an ex- 


34 The Christian Understanding of Man 

much larger and surer than it is at present, he could show 
us how to produce such and such a type of race, but he has 
no special fitness for pronouncing any type to be desirable. 
His science, like every other natural science, gives no clue 
to its right moral application. He is, of course, entitled to 
an opinion on what sort of human stock should be devel¬ 
oped and whether marital affection and the family as we 
now know them should be given up, just as a chemist is 
entitled to an opinion whether chemistry should be further 
exploited to make war more effective; but his opinions on 
these matters are not and cannot be scientific. They are 
valuations, which he makes not with the authority of a sci¬ 
entist but with the responsibility of a citizen. They are 
matters which have to be judged with a wider area of refer¬ 
ence than biology, by different methods and by different 
criteria. It was in order to make this position clear that I 
had to give so wearisome an exposition of the nature of 
science. Science praises nothing, disparages nothing, 
values nothing. In its theoretical aspect it is knowledge of 
facts without reference to its human use; and when this 
reference is brought in it becomes a knowledge of means 
only. The sole legitimate meaning, then, of “ scientific 
civilization ” is a civilization which, whatever its ends or 
values, uses in the pursuit of these the knowledge of the 
interrelations of things which science so abundantly sup¬ 
plies. Given its own ends, a religious civilization may be 
as scientific as any other. 

So far I have tried to define the real nature of the con¬ 
troversy over the scientific and the religious views of man. 
From an examination of what makes science science I have 
attempted to show that from its own side science is in¬ 
competent to pronounce on religion in so far as religion 
includes affirmations about transcendental entities and val¬ 
ues; also that the speculative extension of science which is 


T. E. Jessop 35 

sometimes called scientific philosophy cannot, just because 
it is a speculative extension, claim to retain the authority 
of science, and that its apparent principles — for example, 
that the natural can have only a natural explanation, that 
the nature and value of a thing are revealed in its elemen¬ 
tary constituents or its originating circumstances — are 
too dogmatic and too inapplicable to specifically human 
achievements to pass as even tolerable philosophical prin¬ 
ciples. In all this I have simply been pleading for what 
seems to me to be an axiomatic position, namely that the 
total doctrine of reality in general and of man in particular 
must be reached from and tested by man’s total experience. 
This is not to pit feeling against reason — science includes 
brute fact as well as reason, and theology reason and fact as 
well as feeling — but to insist that reason shall operate on 
all the available data, none of the data being ruled out of 
court from the start. The scientific bias as I understand it 
is the tendency to take nothing but our perceptual experi¬ 
ence as the determinant of theory, the latter being then 
not retested in but simply imposed on the rest of our expe¬ 
rience, this rest being thereby not explained but explained 
away. I have to confess that my scientific as well as my re¬ 
ligious conscience is disturbed by the sweeping and unveri¬ 
fied extension to the distinctively human aspects of mind 
of principles and theories devised for and only verified in 
the study of matter. The subhuman is studied with prodi¬ 
gious patience and marvelous competence, the peculiarly 
human is then impatiently pictured as analogous with or 
consequential upon it. From physics, chemistry and bi¬ 
ology clouds of matter are trailed into mind, and in the 
dust we cannot see. Those who, for example, turn phys¬ 
ics into philosophy used to conclude to the determinedness 
of mind from the determinedness of atoms and are at pres¬ 
ent inferring the freedom of mind from the unpredictabil- 


36 The Christian Understanding of Man 

ity of the behavior of individual electrons. Presumably 
mind is not competent to deliver its own evidence about it¬ 
self; you may make portentous declarations about it with¬ 
out even looking at it; it itself is not to be allowed to suggest 
the categories, principles and methods by which it should 
be investigated. The scientific spirit, when let loose into 
philosophy, is not the spirit of open-mindedness. It in¬ 
volves the claim that a stage of maturity has been reached 
when fidelity to system may override further fidelity to fact; 
in every extension to a new field it may now predetermine 
its conclusions by taking as standard the knowledge ac¬ 
quired in the old fields; the ideas and methods which have 
been vindicated so remarkably in physics and chemistry 
and biology (many scientists would exclude the last) are 
eo ipso the best for any field whatsoever. Put succinctly, 
it is the spirit that looks at an electron and then makes a 
pronouncement on the will of man. The so-called con¬ 
flict between science and religion is in part between those 
who approve such procedure and those who find it intel¬ 
lectually scandalous. 

And yet, these many considerations of procedure not¬ 
withstanding, can anything be said about the content of 
the “ scientific ” philosophy? Is it true that man is nothing 
but an ephemeral incident on one of the minor planets of a 
system in an uncounted aggregate of overwhelmingly vaster 
systems and that he should accordingly take a humble view 
of his affinities, his values and his destiny? The most ob¬ 
vious answer is that spatial and temporal smallness need 
not carry any other kind of smallness with it: the man that 
knows the stars is “ bigger ” than they. But I wish to argue 
the answer that all such naturalism is logically incoherent. 
My ground is that the only creature that can prove any¬ 
thing cannot prove its own insignificance without depriv¬ 
ing the proof of any proof value. Any radical depreciation 


T. E. Jessop 37 

of man involves an equally radical depreciation of the 
scientific thinking which supplies the supposed evidence. 

It is obviously pointless and valueless to draw any con¬ 
clusions at all about man, or anything else, from scientific 
knowledge unless we claim that this knowledge is true (or 
probable, for the qualification makes no difference to the 
argument), and the content of any form of knowledge 
whatever that claims to be true must be compatible with 
this claim. Inconsistency here would be a radical incon¬ 
sistency amounting to absurdity. Now I find this incon¬ 
sistency in any generalization of the scientific view of man. 
For instance, anyone who asserts that man is completely de¬ 
termined contradicts himself, for if his assertion is true it is 
determined, and if it is determined it cannot be true, can¬ 
not indeed be false, for what is necessitated is simply a hap¬ 
pening, like a cough or a sneeze. The old tag that the brain 
secretes thought as the liver secretes bile similarly refutes 
itself, for then thought would just be something, not know 
something else. Any doctrine of natural determinism is 
thus either meaningless or absurd, meaningless if it does 
not claim to be true, absurd if it does claim to be true, since 
its content contradicts the claim made for it. For the de- 
terminist has to believe not only that he himself cannot 
help thinking man is determined but also that those who 
think man is free cannot help thinking so; indeed, he has 
to put on the same plane of inevitability all affirmations and 
negations whatever, the whole medley of thoughts men 
have ever believed and disbelieved and quarreled over. 
With what right he can pick out from this one plane his 
own thoughts (and only some of these) as alone the true 
ones is utterly obscure. If all thoughts were necessitated, 
the distinction of truth and falsity could not arise or be 
sustained. Take as another example the psychoanalytic 
doctrine of man. Psychoanalysts regard, and are obliged 


38 The Christian Understanding of Man 

to do so by their presuppositions, even the most serious 
thinking as instinctive. But by their argumentation this 
very statement, the whole of psychoanalytic theory, and all 
scientific and nonscientific and contradictory statements 
must be all equally instinctive. And by “ instinctive ” the 
psychoanalyst means being determined by hereditary 
causes. Either, then, the doctrine leaves no room for dis¬ 
tinguishing itself as true from other expressions of the same 
or any other instinct, or else the picking out of some only 
of our instinctive activities as true involves the admission 
that being instinctively determined or not has nothing to 
do with their being true or not — an admission which, by 
the way, would take the bottom out of an all too current 
inference that religious belief is not true because it is said 
to be traceable to instinctive pressure. If thinking were 
merely instinctive it would be merely a process, a phase in 
the natural sequence of cause and effect, like an eclipse or 
an earthquake, nest-building and migration, digestion and 
pain. To think this and claim truth for the thinking is 
absurd. Every form of determinism robs all thinking, 
therefore its own assertions and any assertions alleged as 
evidence for these, of any ground for claiming to be true. 
If, per impossibile, we were in fact completely determined, 
we could never logically believe it. Indeed, there would 
be no logic. 

The argument is not tied to determinism, though every 
natural science is deterministic except (and perhaps only 
temporarily) physics. It covers every attempt to envisage 
human thinking under the category of causality even when 
the note of necessity is left out of this. Whatever else the 
natural sciences do, they regard their object as elements 
or factors within a causal system: of any object they inquire 
what its causes are and what its effects. Accordingly, when 
our cognitions are made the object of scientific study they 


T. E. Jessop 39 

too are looked upon simply as processes, happenings, events. 
Now happenings simply happen; only assertions about 
them can be true or false; and when these too are reduced 
to happenings they lose all assertive, all cognitive, mean¬ 
ing. But every scientist has to assume that his own think¬ 
ing about his field is more than a mere event or process 
within that field; he has to believe that it is an event which 
besides any causal relations it may have to other events has 
the further relation of apprehending the nature of other 
events. For this peculiar relation there is no room, no 
ground of conceivability, in his causal world. His outlook 
is so completely objective that he always leaves himself out 
of the world he is studying (even when, as in psychology, 
this is the world of mind), unconsciously exempting him¬ 
self from the conditions he finds in or lays down for it. 
His self-forgetting thinking seeks consistency of content 
only, of object with object, ignoring the further need for 
consistency with its claim to be true; and this further con 1 
sistency cannot be secured so long as the content sets forth 
man as nothing but a part of the web of cause and effect. 
The acid test of any concrete theory of man is that the 
theorizer should be able to insert his theorizing activity 
into the world he claims to delineate and explain. By this 
test naturalism falls, and always must fall; the contradiction 
is inherent in the very type of thinking naturalism repre¬ 
sents. The scientist’s world, or any merely naturalistic ex¬ 
tension of this, cannot hold a single scientist or a single 
truth; it has room for nothing but events related spatially, 
temporally, mathematically and causally, never cogni¬ 
tively. It is a contradiction to assert both that man is sim¬ 
ply a member of a spatio-temporal system, and that the 
events in his mind that issue in the event of thinking this 
are true. Take out the “ simply ” and the contradiction 
disappears. 


40 The Christian Understanding of Man 

To retain, therefore, the distinction of truth and falsity 
even for science alone we have to enlarge the scientific 
world, and in enlarging it modify it deeply, for what is 
added is not something of the same order but something 
different in kind, not having even an analogy with the rest. 
Knowing, the process that has to other events the unique 
relation of apprehending them, is above the causal order, 
in the sense that, although in it, it also knows it. Science 
as knowing transcends the scientific world; its claim to be 
true lifts it above the type of order its content depicts. 
Deny the claim and the content is worthless; admit the 
claim and the content is set in a larger context. Science 
can explain things naturally, but never itself. It cannot be 
true in a purely scientific world. 

With all their rigid exclusion of values, then, from their 
content, the natural sciences rest on a value claim. So does 
all knowledge. By that claim we rise out of the world of 
mere cause and effect. Nothing can be true unless this is 
true. It is the hidden presupposition of all discourse. It 
is also the minimal and irrefutable ground of the transcen¬ 
dental interpretation of man, the open gate which can 
never be closed, so long as we claim to know at all, from the 
causal to what I can only call the spiritual order. My prob¬ 
lem was science and I have kept to it, and shown that in 
the light of it alone the naturalist philosophy falls. But 
man is more than a thinker, and if it is a postulate of all 
discourse that some of his activities have a noncausal 
character, an undeniable value aspect, the possibility is vin¬ 
dicated that they may have further values, further trans¬ 
cendent properties, as integral to them as truth is. And 
finally, the whole reality in which they stand, since it in¬ 
cludes beings who can know nothing about it and do 
scarcely anything in it without postulating the spirituality 
of their own relation to it, must be interpreted in the light 


T. E. Jessop 41 

of this remarkable inclusion. What includes man is not a 
purely causal system; from this man as a valuating being 
who cannot deny his values cannot be derived; therefore 
the ground and significance of his nature must be a spirit¬ 
ual order, presumably even more dominant, through 
knowledge and purpose and fiat, over the causal system 
than man is showing himself to be. 





P ' 

* 

























































































































































































































THE DILEMMA OF HUMANITARIAN 
MODERNISM 

by 

Robert L. Calhoun 





THE DILEMMA OF HUMANITARIAN 
MODERNISM 


Let us first define our terms, roughly and concretely, by 
pointing out the facts to which they refer. Modernism as 
used here means neither a formal school of thought, nor a 
vague whole that takes in all civilized life of recent date. 
It means a particular recurrent mood of temper which in 
essence is very old, which during the past two hundred 
years has become more widespread than ever before, but 
which has never been in any sense universal. Its keynote 
is active, conscious preoccupation with the present, that is, 
with affairs in the forefront of one’s own time, and com¬ 
parative disregard for their larger backgrounds. Its disre¬ 
gard extends both to supra-temporal being, the very 
existence of which it commonly denies, and to the more 
fateful and tragic aspects of temporality itself. The past, 
especially the obstinate, urgent past embodied in living tra¬ 
dition, is disparaged; and the incessant sweep of temporal 
process toward the future is treated as though it were, in all 
essential respects, compliant to human understanding and 
control. A tendency to glorify man and his works, though 
not indeed universal, is typical of the modernistic temper. 
A strong sense of emancipation pervades it; a sense of hav¬ 
ing outgrown traditional ideas and obligations by new 
critical insight. Such insight may issue at the moment in 
dogmatic rationalism, in positivism or in skepticism. But 
in each case, the modernist takes pride in having cut away 
spiritual bonds which else would hold the present and fu¬ 
ture to the past. This cutting of bonds affects also group 


46 The Christian Understanding of Man 

solidarity in the present, and modernism usually tends 
away from the more exacting kinds of group loyalty toward 
self-reliant individualism and cosmopolitan tolerance. All 
this converges, for awhile, into an expansive kind of opti¬ 
mism, which may be thought of as modernism in its more 
naive, “ healthy-minded ” phase. Among the most 
thoughtful modernists, however, skepticism and disillusion 
grow; and a phase of world weariness or pessimism sets in, 
to be succeeded by a new period of more radical dogmatic 
self-commitments. 

Modernism has found voice more than once in Western 
civilization: for example, in Greek cities of the fifth and 
early fourth centuries b.c., when the Sophists thrived; in 
Italian, French and English cities of the Renaissance, when 
Ockhamist moderni and neo-pagan humanists made com¬ 
mon cause against traditionalism; and most widely of all in 
the cities of Europe, the Americas and the Antipodes, from 
the rationalistic-romantic eighteenth century until now. 
This mood flourishes in urban settings where the tempo of 
life is quick and artificially portioned out, and the works 
of man are much in evidence: not ordinarily in rural parts 
where nature sets a slower pace, tradition is stubborn, and 
men are kept in mind of real time, continuous and inex- 
plorable, by the treadmill of the seasons. It follows, more¬ 
over, on epochs of swift expansion, when discovery, 
conquest and new cultural contacts have stretched old 
habits of thought and conduct in such wise as to make room 
for new ones; when expanding trade or improved produc¬ 
tion has brought new standards of living; and when a “ ris¬ 
ing class ” has made decisive headway against its traditional 
masters. The actual drive forward is in each case imbued 
with some strong, impulsive faith, of which the ensuing 
mood is in part an afterglow. The mood centers, finally, 
among the beneficiaries rather than the victims of such 


Robert L. Calhoun 


47 

expansion; among the conquerors, the exploiters, the mem¬ 
bers of an insurgent class which has successfully con¬ 
solidated its new gains. In Periclean Athens, at the 
Renaissance, and from the French Revolution to the first 
World War, this has always been the bourgeoisie: city¬ 
dwelling merchants, bankers, professional people and other 
middle-class folk who have gained power at the expense of 
land-owning aristocracies. Since 1917, spokesmen for the 
wage-workers have begun for the first time to reach the top. 
Their fighting creed has been Marxism, and they may be ex¬ 
pected to develop a collectivistic, rather than the more in¬ 
dividualistic sort of modernism. The latter remains typi¬ 
cally a middle-class temper, whose social outlook in our day 
is apt to be more or less definitely humanitarian but not 
radical. Genuinely radical thought and behavior goes 
better with a driving religious or quasi-religious faith not 
yet cooled into modernism; such faith as original Chris¬ 
tianity or unrevised Marxism involves. Modernists indeed 
often help to clear the way for a new revolution, by under¬ 
mining traditional beliefs and mores. Further, modernism 
has in it always the seeds of its own disruption, and in that 
sense also points beyond itself toward new radical commit¬ 
ments. But its own characteristic habit is moderation, not 
revolutionism of any sort. 

The term humanitarian as used here refers also to a cer¬ 
tain social temper. It means, however, not a recurring 
phase of Western culture, but a perennial attitude which 
has persisted through many successive cultural phases, and 
characterized many diverse movements. Its keynote is 
conscious effort to relieve the suffering and to promote the 
welfare of less fortunate fellow men. Its forms are many 
and its expressions range from calculated beneficence to 
fervent reforming zeal. The more ardent sort of humani- 
tarianism has often been a factor in radical movements, re- 


48 The Christian Understanding of Man 

ligious or secular; perhaps even defining at crucial points 
their objectives and character. But we are concerned with 
it here in a much less heroic form. The form of it now 
most widely associated with modernism is the attitude dis¬ 
played, typically, by members of a favored group who are 
not unwilling, within limits, to champion the cause of 
those less favored, and to make some concessions in their 
behalf. This does not imply readiness to give up one’s own 
basic privileges, nor deliberately to help to displace an ex¬ 
isting social order which for the time guarantees them. It 
does, however, imply awareness of human wants and possi¬ 
bilities outside one’s own special group. It implies, more¬ 
over, a comparatively high valuation of man and his earthly 
life, to which religious and ethical insights, intellectual 
criticism and scientific study, technological advance and 
many other factors contribute. 

In present-day humanitarian modernism this temper 
has taken a characteristic and, as I shall hold, a very un¬ 
stable form. For some it has become a religion, “ the reli¬ 
gion of humanity ” in Comte’s sense; for others within and 
without the churches, a substitute for religion. The for¬ 
mer group are, one may suspect, much the less numerous; 
followers of Comte and other Positivists, members of the 
various Ethical societies, certain pragmatists, religious hu¬ 
manists and other like groups of intellectuals. These are 
the reflective minority in humanitarian modernism, and in 
due course we shall examine a contemporary instance of 
their understanding of man. But by far the greater num¬ 
ber who practise, roughly and not too consistently, “ the 
service of man,” do little theorizing about it. They are 
people in and out of the church whose belief in God and an 
unseen world has grown dim or quite vanished; but who 
have a diffuse faith in themselves, their neighbors, and the 
manifest destiny of some sizable portion of mankind, and 


Robert L. Calhoun 


49 

a desire to help make this world a better place. They sup¬ 
port the Red Cross, help fill community chests and engage 
in many sorts of social welfare programs; vote by millions 
for Mr. Roosevelt and the New Deal, or, alternatively, for 
the League and limited sanctions, on behalf of the down¬ 
trodden; and in general try to lend a hand toward making 
life more secure here and now for those who seem to them 
most obviously in need of help. Their positions are not 
clearly thought out, and their actions all too often are self¬ 
contradictory. But they exemplify well the strength and 
the weakness of humanitarian modernism. 

Its main strength resides, indeed, less in the theories of 
intellectuals than in the habits of these laymen, who have 
progressed beyond unquestioning conformity, but not up 
to the level of sustained, systematic reflection and consis¬ 
tent behavior. We shall begin our analysis, therefore, with 
that contemporary modernism which is mainly a fabric of 
conduct and custom; proceed next to examine a typical 
modernist theory; and consider finally the bearing of Chris¬ 
tian faith upon such ways of life and thought. 

1 . UNREFLECTED MODERNISM 

(a) The more important roots of contemporary mod¬ 
ernism are social forces and these may be noted first. 
Among them is organized Christianity. The social behav¬ 
ior patterns of the partly Christianized West result from a 
long interchange of influence among Christian and non- 
Christian ways of life, which a slowly growing tolerance has 
permitted to develop side by side. To the rise of present 
day modernism Christianity has contributed first through a 
long and powerful, though by no means a clear and consis¬ 
tent, practical attack on archaic sources of fear and other 
irrational compulsions to inhumane, destructive behavior. 
That institutional Christianity has itself fostered an appall- 


50 The Christian Understanding of Man 

ing amount of “ demonry ” should not blind one to the 
fact that its central gospel has been a message of deliverance 
from all created powers of evil, and that through the dark¬ 
est ages of Western civilization the church and its sects 
have in fact labored, if often with discouragingly dim vision 
and dull tools, to bring order out of what they have be¬ 
lieved to be demon-inspired chaos. In fighting these un¬ 
seen devils, they have fought among other evil things the 
divine pretensions of human tyrants, including many 
holders of their own high offices. And against such claims 
to divine right by despots, they have defended the worth 
of ordinary human persons, with plentiful inconsistency 
but with recurrent vigor. These influences are among the 
practical roots of recent modernism. 

But the larger part of its derivation is from sources not 
specifically Christian. In the forefront are applied science 
and technology, which have exorcized some devils more ef¬ 
fectually than could the church, and have made life in 
many ways far easier, more various and more secure for the 
economically fortunate than in any previous age of which 
we know. At some points, notably in the development of 
the medical sciences and their application to problems of 
individual and public health, such improvements have 
been made available in substantial measure for people of 
all social groups. Advances like these, even though offset 
by new perils from machinery in war and in peace, could 
scarcely have failed to increase confidence in human knowl¬ 
edge and skill. 

Modern capitalism, next, has contributed indirectly 
through its encouragement of technology and of scientific 
enterprise. Directly, by its achievement of large-scale pro¬ 
duction of goods through more systematic organization of 
men and machines, it has added to the sense (albeit a partly 
illusory sense) of security shared by the owners of business 


Robert L. Calhoun 


5i 

and industry and members of the “ upper middle class ” by 
and large. It is among these groups that modernism has 
always found most of its exemplars, chiefly in times of rela¬ 
tive prosperity and peace after conquest. 

The spread of political democracy and of popular educa¬ 
tion has helped to extend the borders of those groups in 
Western society whose members are at least nominally, and 
in part actually, participants in the life of free men. Both 
these movements have encouraged the growth, among 
larger numbers of people, of an attitude of self-conscious 
autonomy. Popular education, moreover, has opened the 
minds of an unprecedented number to the influence of 
modernistic ideas and theories, some of which will be no¬ 
ticed in a moment. 

Finally a temporary dominance of the white peoples in 
world trade and politics, made possible mainly by the tech¬ 
nological, economic and political processes just mentioned, 
has furnished during four hundred years an important part 
of the framework for the newest modernism. Beginning 
with discovery of the New World and circumnavigation 
of the Old, European and American imperialists have felt 
free to exploit the vast territories thus opened up; and to 
subjugate, for their own profit, the “ backward ” (i.e., un¬ 
mechanized) peoples whose homelands they have invaded. 
So long as this white dominance continued without serious 
challenge, even after it had become more obviously an eco¬ 
nomic compulsion than a high adventure, the sense of 
power, security and hope enjoyed by considerable groups 
in the West was augmented and bulwarked by another 
factor, pride of race, sustained by what seemed for a time 
the clearest practical proofs of superiority — military con¬ 
quest and economic success. 

The more theoretical patterns of popular modernism 
are complex and none too clear. One major part of these 


52 The Christian Understanding of Man 

also derived from Christian tradition. The idea of an 
orderly universe, and the conception of a moral law im¬ 
planted in the nature of man, were transmitted from their 
Greek sources to the modern world by Christian theolo¬ 
gians. The four “ natural ” virtues of Greek moral theory 
(courage, self-control, wisdom, justice) and three “ super¬ 
natural ” virtues (faith, hope, love) have survived in like 
manner, as the seven “ cardinal virtues ” of medieval mor¬ 
alists. In attenuated form, and without the corresponding 
table of seven deadly sins (headed by pride!), all these 
persist in modernist ethics today. More basically still, the 
appreciation of man recently in vogue has arisen in a cul¬ 
ture long undergirded by Christian belief in man’s son- 
ship to God and God’s love for man, which set human 
personality in a perspective unknown, so far as I am aware, 
to pre-Christian thought. In short, modernist ideology 
even in its most healthy-minded form is historically unin¬ 
telligible apart from Christian ethics and dogma. 

Yet the prevailing thought forms of modernism, like its 
practical behavior patterns, are derived mainly from other 
than specifically Christian sources. One of these is the 
growing popular stock of scientific and near-scientific ideas, 
particularly such as bear most directly on the nature of man. 
Garbled but still recognizable versions of the Darwinian 
theory of human origins and evolution, the Mendelian 
theory of transmission of characters from parent to off¬ 
spring and the Freudian theory of individual motivation 
have become a part of our intellectual climate. These and 
numerous others influence directly the thinking of many 
laymen who have some first-hand acquaintance with them, 
through reading or radio addresses or museum displays or 
other public education programs. They influence indi¬ 
rectly a very much larger number, through infiltration into 
popular journalism, fiction, propaganda and political de- 


Robert L. Calhoun 


53 

bate, often as unexamined presuppositions. Not only do 
they provide detailed categories for popular thought about 
man, but their dissemination has helped to develop a gen¬ 
eral enthusiasm for “ science,” most often thought of, one 
must suspect, as a wonderful device for securing human 
ends rather than as an austere quest for truth. This tend¬ 
ency to glorify “ science ” is apt to issue in a romantic nat¬ 
uralism, in which nature (both human and extra-human) 
is vaguely thought of as genial and complaisant to the well¬ 
being of men. 

Two other convictions, more definitely philosophic in 
origin, are current likewise. One springs from “ the idea 
of progress,” developed since the Renaissance: the convic¬ 
tion, articulate or not, that we live in an open world whose 
future will be indefinitely better than its past, and that so 
long as the earth continues habitable, the way is clear for 
advance through steadily growing and essentially adequate 
human competence. The other springs in part from the 
ethic of utilitarianism, though it finds a ready ally also in 
easy-going common sense. To many who have never heard 
the word utilitarianism in its technical meaning, “ the 
greatest happiness of the greatest number ” seems a sensible 
and usable formulation of an ethical goal to which all de¬ 
cent folk can subscribe. It must be construed, no doubt, 
in conformity with another half thought out notion de¬ 
rived from popular science: “ the survival of the fittest,” 
among whom oneself and one’s own group, nation, race — 
economic class — naturally belong. The upshot is that 
concern for one’s neighbors is acknowledged within limits 
to have a claim upon one’s conduct as a member of a human 
community. This is in general the outlook described 
above as humanitarian. It associates itself, easily as we 
have seen, with “ the religion of humanity ” in which man¬ 
kind is presented as a modern substitute for God. 


54 The Christian Understanding of Man 

(b) The understanding of man which prevails among 
unreflective modernists is displayed primarily in practical 
behavior, not in theoretic formulations. The behavior in 
question, moreover, is not self-consistent, but such as to 
suggest that contradictory estimates of man are operating 
side by side in the conduct of both individuals and groups. 
These estimates relate to man as animal, as social being, 
and as person. 

Man as animal is thought of more or less uncritically, 
in lay circles, as at once a child of nature and its destined 
lord. In contrast to the traditional view of man as sprung 
directly from a supernatural source, the tendency now cur¬ 
rent among modernist laymen is to think of man as part 
and parcel of the natural order, arisen in the midst of it, 
not come down into it from above. Man thus viewed is not 
“ the debris of an Adam ” created in the image of God and 
fallen into ruin, but the hero of a long upward climb 
which is still going on. The evolution which has exalted 
him above the plants and simpler animals and put all 
things under his feet is thought of usually in the simple, 
dramatic terms of struggle for existence and survival of 
the fittest. The word “ fittest ” carries, for the layman, a 
moral connotation that is foreign to strict biological theory 
but almost unavoidable in popular discourse. It seems to 
him to follow, then, directly from the “ laws ” of organic 
evolution that mankind, and more particularly his own 
group among men, has proved title to whatever eminence 
it now holds, and a clear right to any further gains it may 
be able to achieve. These convictions take practical shape 
in the serious cultivation of bodily health, mental self- 
improvement, and practice of the strenuous life in many 
forms. The more aggressive virtues tend to be exalted 
above those which have less obvious competitive value. 
Not only is success measured in terms of prestige, but a new 


Robert L. Calhoun 


\ 


55 


sort of justification for this ancient prejudice is now read 
off directly from the nature of animal life itself. 

But if modern man thinks of himself as a child of nature, 
and finds his right in its laws, he thinks of himself also 
as its master, potentially and in large part actually. Francis 
Bacon’s word, “ Knowledge is power,” fits the modernist 
mood in our day as well as at the Renaissance; with the dif¬ 
ference that we now have accessible an immensely greater 
body of systematized knowledge, and the concrete results 
of its application. If some find these results not funda¬ 
mentally reassuring, the unreflective modernist is not of 
their number. To him the ultimate ascendancy of that 
part of mankind with which he identifies himself seems 
assured. 

What this part is, is determined mainly by the culture 
in which he has grown up. Just as man the animal is a 
child of nature, so man the social being comes to birth and 
is nurtured within a folk or community which is at once 
his home for life and, in a quite literal sense, the parent 
for and against whose authority he must exert his own will 
if he is to become a mature self. Loyalty to the social 
order in which one is born and reared may take either a 
mainly emotional or a critical intellectualized form. The 
investment of civic status with emotion-stirring religious 
sanctions is as old, presumably, as civilization. It wanes 
as rationalism grows, but when human reason suffers tem¬ 
porary bankruptcy, as may happen under the stresses of un¬ 
relieved misfortune, folk worship is apt to be revived with 
devastating force. The social loyalty of modernists, need¬ 
less to say, is normally of the more critical type. Their 
membership in a community and their sharing of its folk¬ 
ways are tempered by recognition that folkways change, 
and persuasion that they can and should be changed for the 
better, through the efforts of individuals and groups within 


56 The Christian Understanding of Man 

society. Accordingly, they have supported major reform 
movements against chattel slavery, cruel treatment of crim¬ 
inals and of psychopathic patients, political tyranny, eco¬ 
nomic inequity and war. Patriotism means for them, ex¬ 
cept when they are carried away by social pressure, a 
discriminating loyalty which expects the future to be better 
than the past. They are distinctly more at home in the at¬ 
mosphere of rational discussion and adjustment than when 
the gales of archaic passion are rising. 

Their loyalty is directed perhaps most characteristically 
toward human beings as persons, who are felt to be of in¬ 
trinsic worth, in some sense ends in themselves. As Kant 
used this phrase, it signalized his reasoned conviction that 
man’s essential being is supra-temporal. In modernist 
hands, it has become a way of voicing a practical concern 
for man’s present and future well-being within the time 
order. This concern gets expression, on the one hand, in 
philanthropic activities which seek amelioration of life for 
the less favored among the present generation. Such activ¬ 
ities are the outcome, needless to say, of very mixed mo¬ 
tives, some merely habitual, some prudential, some still 
more crudely egoistic. There is no way of measuring the 
proportion in which genuine concern for the less fortunate 
just because they are human persons, and therefore deserve 
a chance to live normally, is present. In some instances it 
may be a considerable factor, in others a very small factor 
indeed. But where present at all — and my impression is 
that by and large it is by no means negligible — it involves 
in so far a high practical valuation of man. 

An especially notable modern tendency is the concentra¬ 
tion of effort on the welfare of children and youth; in es¬ 
sence an attempt to insure human well-being in the future 
which shall surpass that of the present and past. Again 
motives are mixed, but at least some of the behavior which 


Robert L. Calhoun 


57 

results is unmistakable in its intent. Thus, there is grow¬ 
ing advocacy and practice of birth control among thought¬ 
ful people who do not shirk parenthood, but who seek to 
provide for their children as good a chance as possible for 
healthy life before and after birth. A dominant note in the 
vigorous modernist movements for educational reform has 
been stress on the need for “ child-centered ” rather than 
book-centered schools, and for the extension of opportu¬ 
nities for learning to all children and youth who can profit 
by them, with special provision for those who are “ back¬ 
ward ” or subnormal. This note is echoed in the familiar 
present stress laid both by parents and by others upon adult 
responsibility to children and youth, reversing the long 
dominant patriarchal emphasis of children’s responsibility 
to their elders. The very excesses to which these recent 
tendencies have been carried serve to underscore the point 
of chief interest here: the widespread eagerness to provide 
for a better future, which children and children’s children, 
not men and women of the present, are to enjoy. However 
utopian, nay illusory, such eagerness may seem, in the light 
of ominous present realities, and however defective may 
be its chosen methods, it embodies an authentic and valu¬ 
able kind of self-transcendence. In its exaltation of per¬ 
sonality, and its effort to adapt institutional patterns to 
human needs, modernism makes its closest approach to 
Christian faith. Its mistake is in taking human persons as 
ultimate. 


2 . PRAGMATISM AS AN EXAMPLE OF 
MODERNISTIC PHILOSOPHY 

Among the reflective minority of modernists, philo¬ 
sophic labels and emphases differ considerably. Perhaps 
the keenest of all become skeptics or pessimists who exem¬ 
plify modernist thinking in process of dissolution before 


58 The Christian Understanding of Man 

the onset of a new dogmatism. Among the rest, for whom 
modernism is still unspoiled, certain common tendencies 
of thought are easily recognized. The most obvious is a 
strong tendency to seek principles of explanation within, 
rather than beyond, what is empirically given. This means 
preference for monism rather than dualism, immanent- 
ism rather than belief in transcendent reality, optimism or 
meliorism instead of pessimism, gnostic assurance rather 
than doubt-harrowed faith. Such thought usually takes 
one of three main directions: metaphysical idealism of an 
oversimplified sort which minimizes the tragedy of exist¬ 
ence; romantic naturalism; and positivism or “ radical 
empiricism ” which oscillates between naturalistic and hu¬ 
manistic poles. Pragmatism is a form of this third alterna¬ 
tive, developed mainly in the United States. Its founders 
and framers include, in America, the logician Charles 
Peirce, the psychologist William James, the social philoso¬ 
pher George Mead, and the educator John Dewey; and 
its proponents now number a vigorous company of 
younger men all over this country, both in the field of 
philosophy and in the related fields of education and the 
social studies. 

(a) As the name suggests, instrumentalism or pragma¬ 
tism claims affinity with the life of action, and disparages 
the looker-on. Homo faber is its hero, and “ learning by 
doing ” one of its watchwords. Traditional philosophy, it 
holds, has been mostly pretentious mythology, laying claim 
to knowledge value which it has not possessed. The genu¬ 
ine philosopher must take his cue from the common sense 
of men who get work done, instead of pretending to think 
high thoughts. Pragmatism professes to align itself, in 
short, with homespun practical activity as against abstract 
theory and wishful fancy, and for progressive experimenta¬ 
tion as against rehearsal of sacrosanct tradition. 


Robert L. Calhoun 


59 

Among the philosophic theories in the textbooks, there 
are several with which pragmatism has obvious affinity. 
It shares the antimetaphysical bias and the social emphasis 
of Comtean positivism, and the ethical temper of English 
Utilitarian thought. Herbert Spencer’s combination of 
these tendencies with evolutionism produced what may be 
the nearest European analogue to American pragmatism, 
but he did not share the distinctive pragmatic conception 
of truth as successful action. Hegelian idealism was 
Dewey’s point of departure, and from it he set out — some¬ 
what as Marx did — to find a more concrete program for 
action, without losing the sense of a fluid wholeness of all 
things which Hegel’s system so vividly conveys. Marxism 
itself, as American interpreters are making plain, has a 
family likeness to pragmatism in that both are activist phi¬ 
losophies of strongly monistic temper; though Marxism 
has a drastic sense of reality which pragmatism often does 
not display. Finally, the current tendency to “ existential 
thinking ” with its clear-cut stress on decision or act as in¬ 
dispensable to knowing, repeats in another key the prag¬ 
matic insistence that thinking is integral to action. But all 
these are, in the main, analogies to rather than sources of 
pragmatism, which is itself a fresh movement, a living gos¬ 
pel, rather than a systematic philosophy in the classical 
sense. 

More properly to be accounted sources of this movement 
are certain nineteenth century trends in biology and psy¬ 
chology. The more exact physical sciences, and especially 
the mathematical disciplines which define their basic out¬ 
look, have never figured much in pragmatist thought. 
Neither have the recent applications of mathematical anal¬ 
ysis in biochemistry, biophysics and genetics, nor the re¬ 
cent studies of behavior in terms of conditioned reflexes 
(a fresh version of associationism). The more precise 


60 The Christian Understanding of Man 

kinds of analysis and the more atomistic conceptions of 
reality are out of key with the genius of pragmatism. On 
the other hand, the importance of Darwinian biology and 
functional psychology for its development can hardly be 
overstated. To pragmatists, both these movements have 
seemed to break away, in the name of science itself, from 
the outgrown notions of fixed forms and logical or me¬ 
chanical determinateness; and to lay primary stress on pro¬ 
cess, fluid development, novelty, concrete becoming. 
Both, moreover, have conspired to make thinking itself 
appear in a new light: as a process primarily instrumental 
to the survival of a growing organism or an evolving spe¬ 
cies, in interaction with a variable environment. “ The in¬ 
fluence of Darwin on philosophy ” has been felt at many 
points but nowhere more obviously nor more fundamen¬ 
tally than in the rise of American pragmatism. 

A still more concrete source of the movement is the half 
ideal, half actual fabric of American democracy and educa¬ 
tional reform. The temper of pragmatism, indeed, cannot 
be understood at all without reference to what has been 
called “ the American dream ” — the hope for a common¬ 
wealth of individual freemen. As interpreted by Dewey 
and Mead, a democratic order is one in which the individ¬ 
ual lives and has his being wholly within the community, 
while the community is constituted and molded by the 
living of its individual members. In this view economic 
and political liberalism combine with vigorous, though 
mostly conventional, moral idealism and social meliorism. 

Closely related to this interest in a democratic common¬ 
wealth is a characteristic, determining interest in educa¬ 
tional aims and procedures. The catch-phrase: “ Educa¬ 
tion for democracy, and democracy in education,” gives 
voice to a central aim of the pragmatic movement. Indeed, 
the movement in its present phase might be regarded, not 


Robert L. Calhoun 


61 


unjustly, as concerned above all with the practical task of 
inducting children and young people into a better and 
better corporate life. John Dewey, who has dominated the 
movement since James’ death, is first of all an educator of 
originality, boldness and persuasive power. His thought 
presupposes the nineteenth-century development of sense 
realism in educational theory, and carries much further 
its stress on manipulative behavior and, more generally, 
on activity in contrast to receptivity. Far more than the 
older education, it exalts the educative value of actual par¬ 
ticipation in social enterprises, both in the schoolroom and 
out of it. From beginning to end, the learning process is 
conceived and practised as a social adventure, part and 
parcel of the whole life of the community and of mankind. 

The theory of pragmatism, thus rooted, may be charac¬ 
terized roughly by reference to three major tenets. 

(1) First and most basic is a distinctive theory of knowl¬ 
edge, to which “ experimental logic ” is the key. All genu¬ 
ine thinking is a grapple with concrete problems, which 
arise as obstacles to action. Concepts and judgments are 
plans of attack on such obstacles, nascent movements to 
free the temporarily impeded drive toward desired objec¬ 
tives. The “ meaning ” of a concept and the “ truth ” of a 
judgment can be significantly defined only within the 
limits of such experimental behavior, actual or possible. 
A concept always “ means ” some experienceable datum 
toward which (or away from which) it serves to direct the 
activity of the questioning organism. It never “ means ” 
some extra-experimental reality. A judgment is “ true ” 
when, and just in so far as, the overt activity in which it 
issues is successful in surmounting the obstacle and achiev¬ 
ing the desired experience. Such practical verification is 
truth, which is always relative to a particular concrete situ¬ 
ation, and always a practical characteristic of behavior, 


62 The Christian Understanding of Man 

rather than an abstract, theoretic character of “ pure 
thought.” 

This tenet is so fundamental as to deserve some further 
comment. Obviously it involves high valuation of sense 
experience and manipulative activity. Hence the famil¬ 
iar labels “ experimentalism ” and “ operational philoso¬ 
phy.” It is not merely sense empiricism, nor physical 
behaviorism, but it has close affinity with both. Abstract 
logic, contemplative intuition and the forms or essences 
usually claimed as their objects, are disparaged by prag¬ 
matists, as in no proper and distinctive sense modes of cog¬ 
nition. Likewise, belief which affirms the existence or 
predicates a given character, of some supposed reality out¬ 
side the range of what can be experienced, is rejected as 
unverifiable and meaningless. It is usual among prag¬ 
matists to speak of their theory of knowledge as scientific, 
in contrast to what they regard as empty speculative flights 
of the classical philosophies. They even equate their 
theory, often enough, with “ the scientific method,” which 
alone can provide significant knowledge of (i.e. practically 
testable and exploitable adjustment within) the realm of 
experience. By “ the scientific method,” however, they 
usually mean something much more like the rough and 
ready experimentalism of common sense than like the pre¬ 
cise analytic, deductive procedure eulogized by Descartes, 
and practised by leaders in the more exact sciences, from 
Galileo to Weyl and Schrodinger, as an indispensable part 
of the intricate techniques which they know as scientific 
method. The desire of pragmatism to be scientific, and at 
the same time to employ concrete rather than abstract pro¬ 
cedures, leads directly to the disparagement of both formal 
logic and faith referred to above. 

(2) A second major tenet is lively confidence in man 
as arbiter of his own destiny. Pessimistic views of man- 


Robert L. Calhoun 63 

kind, whether the logical, materialistic or skeptical, are re¬ 
jected, and “ the idea of progress ” strongly championed. 
Man is thought able to change both his environment and 
himself, beyond any specifiable limit, so as to resolve frus¬ 
trations that block, for a time, the free run of instinctive 
and habitual behavior. This is the work of “ creative in¬ 
telligence,” which acts in the experimental manner just 
discussed, and which can be developed by proper educa¬ 
tion to levels as yet unachieved. Such education must be 
at once intellectual and moral, individual and social, con¬ 
ducted wholly within the concrete flow of “ experience.” 
Whether human experience is itself the whole of reality, 
or whether it involves interaction between human beings 
and an environment larger than all that they directly ex¬ 
perience at any time, is a question with which Dewey’s 
following, in particular, has never clearly come to grips. 
Dewey himself has written now in the vein of subjectivism, 
now in that of a somewhat vague realism. But in any 
event, there is no ambiguity about his confidence in man. 

(3) A third characteristic of pragmatism goes with this 
vagueness about external reality: a strong bias toward 
metaphysical simplicity. Its preference, indeed, would 
be not to bother with metaphysical problems at all. But 
since this sort of issue cannot be wholly avoided, the alter¬ 
native is chosen which prima facie is the simplest possible, 
a one-story metaphysic in which everything is treated as 
some variant of an epicene stuff called “ pure experience.” 
Dualisms of subject and object, mind and body, value and 
fact, God and the world, are smoothed out or entirely dis¬ 
carded. There is especially vehement and sustained po¬ 
lemic against what is called, somewhat loosely, “ the super¬ 
natural.” This may mean a transcendent God, timeless 
forms, or noumenal minds, souls or spirits. Traditional 
theology is condemned as irrational, unscientific, and anti- 


64 The Christian Understanding of Man 

social, somewhat in the tone of familiar Marxist discourse 
on “ the opium of the people.” But whereas Marxism re¬ 
jects all religion, including the religious attitude as such, 
pragmatic humanists are more likely to reject only that sort 
of religion which points beyond nature to God. The re¬ 
ligious attitude, conceived as devotion to whatever within 
nature (including man) works most strongly for the in¬ 
crease of human welfare, they warmly affirm. 

“ Pure experience,” then, is a universal matrix, coex¬ 
tensive with nature or reality, within which all particulars 
arise and pass away. It is described as though having at 
once the vivid concreteness of individual experiences and 
the generality of a public environment; everywhere fluent, 
and in the fullest sense continuous. In the midst of it the 
human race arises, without break of any kind, and within 
the race individuals, each fully continuous with his cul¬ 
tural and physical milieu. All is in flux. Physis, not ousia, 
is the universal reality. The notion of substance is dis¬ 
carded, as a vestige of outgrown scholastic metaphysics. 
Fixed forms — even logical or mathematical forms — are 
acknowledged only as methodological fictions or instru¬ 
mental concepts which, if taken as referring to permanent 
objective entities, become a fruitful source of illusion. 
There are, indeed, relatively long-enduring arrangements 
in the flux of experience, but no unchanging forms any¬ 
where. Ideals of all sorts arise in the stream, are part of it, 
and having their turns as plans of action, pass on with all 
else that perpetually perishes. The present is the only 
locus of actuality; a better future, imaginable now, the only 
proper goal of knowledge and action. Except as tran¬ 
scribed into present experience, and continually modified 
into an ever new present, the past is null. Eternity is a 
meaningless word. 

(b) Man like everything else is a part of this flux. In the 


Robert L. Calhoun 


65 

course of organic evolution, man the animal emerges in 
essentially the same way as any other species. This is 
simply accepted as a fact, not explained, nor discussed in 
detail. Like other animals, men respond to environmental 
stimuli in various instinctive ways, driven by natural hun¬ 
gers. In the process, both the environment and the human 
organisms are changed. The environment is used and 
made more useful; while within human organisms, adap¬ 
tive behavior brings about the growth of habit systems in 
which man’s responses are schematized, and gain in ease 
and precision. Thus far we are concerned with the “ bio¬ 
logic individual,” in the midst of a biologic social group. 

Among the habits which men, and many other animals, 
develop are more or less complicated habits of gesturing, 
and signaling, by cries, grimaces and other movements. It 
is decisive for man’s development that the signals which 
he exchanges with his fellows do not remain mere gestures 
or signs, but become true symbols, to which the one who 
initiates them and the one to whom they are addressed may 
respond in essentially the same way. The snarl of an angry 
dog will guide the behavior of his intended victim, but not 
in the same way his own. He reacts to the behavior of the 
other dog, not to his own. Or at least not in the same way. 
He is not, for example, frightened by his own growl. But 
the word spoken by a human animal, able to become a hu¬ 
man self, serves not merely to guide his neighbor’s reac¬ 
tions but to shape his own also. He responds internally 
to his own gesture, as his neighbor is to respond to it overtly; 
thus himself “ taking the role of the other ” in the course of 
his own symbolic behavior. The “ meaning ” of any such 
gesture is simply the acts or portions of acts which it serves 
to stimulate; and when these responses are prompted not 
only in one party to the gesture but in both, the gesture 
becomes not merely a signal but a symbol. In such inter- 


66 The Christian Understanding of Man 

course, the meanings of words and other gestures become 
“ internalized ” in the individuals who employ them, and 
these individuals become selves, personae, performers of 
roles; in short, human persons. For what we mean by a 
person is precisely one who is able to “ put himself in the 
place of another.” 

Within the complete stimulus-response cycle which we 
call an act, a subjective or private moment thus becomes 
distinguishable from the objective or public moment of 
overt action. The subjective moment is the relatively in¬ 
choate, incipient phase of readiness and of nascent activity 
which issues in the completed, eventually objective action. 
Subjectively, the individual “ knows what he is about to 
do,” in the sense that through “ internalized ” symbolic 
stimuli the projected action, though still future, controls 
his present behavior. He takes now, anticipatorily, the 
role of the one (viz. himself) who will shortly perform the 
action, and in some measure also the roles of those who will 
respond to it. But this is to be conscious, to have mind, to 
be a self. And the group within which behavior of this 
sort has emerged is no longer a merely biologic, but a hu¬ 
man social group, made up of persons or selves, who come 
to be and have their being only within such a group. 

Their intelligence, further, is creative at the level of 
human intercourse, in the sense that it makes possible in¬ 
tentional modifications both of one’s environment and of 
one’s own behavior patterns. The animal modifies its en¬ 
vironment, but not with deliberate foresight; and its own 
behavior patterns are relatively fixed in instinctive chains 
and habit systems. Man can change both environment and 
self with deliberate intent. The plans which guide such 
intended change are called concepts or ideals; and they are 
controlled by experienced values, i.e., those characteristics 
of objects which satisfy human interests. In each human 


Robert L. Calhoun 


67 

group, the moral task of each self is to realize progressively 
in successive concrete situations the utmost attainable 
range and sum of values. This involves that each self must 
take, subjectively, the roles of other selves, and identify 
himself overtly with those processes of change which make 
toward the harmonization of many interests, of many per¬ 
sons. The goal is progressive achievement of socially con¬ 
ditioned satisfactions for as many of these as possible. 

In this continuing moral campaign for the good life, par¬ 
ticular objectives may be thought of as moments of aes¬ 
thetic satisfaction. Such moments are lulls in the strenuous 
quest, when competing interests are momentarily harmo¬ 
nized in the presence of some inclusive systems of values or 
satisfactions, and the seeker enjoys a temporary “ consum¬ 
mation.” Like every other finite experience, this sort of 
interlude is wholly within the stream of natural events. 
The refreshment which it provides can be accounted for 
as the outcome of an orderly release of energies, a resolu¬ 
tion of tensions within the organism. It leads on into fur¬ 
ther vital activity, and the achievement of further advances 
in the pursuit of individual and social satisfactions. 

The role of creative intelligence is kept to the fore. By 
selection and manipulation, each man determines which 
parts of his environment shall condition most directly his 
behavior, which is to say that he himself continuously “ cre¬ 
ates ” his own “ effective environment.” Yet in the long 
run it is true, and now and again deserves recognition, that 
this is possible only because in the total environment of 
each person there are sources of satisfaction which can be 
selected, and processes other than his own efforts through 
which such values are being realized. These value-making 
processes also are wholly within the natural order. Indeed, 
for most practical purposes, one may say they are wholly 
within the range of human social living. To these, and to 


68 The Christian Understanding of Man 

the furtherance of their working, in the transformation of 
imagined or ideal into actual values, each man owes alle¬ 
giance; all the more when practice of such allegiance is 
costly to himself. Such devotion not to some illusory tran¬ 
scendent deity, but to the concrete social and other natural 
values, and value-achieving processes, constitutes the reli¬ 
gious attitude, the only one which, for a convinced prag¬ 
matic humanist, is valid. 

3. CHRISTIAN FAITH AND HUMANITARIAN MODERNISM 

To pass from such high-minded naturalism to the Chris¬ 
tian understanding of man is to move into additional 
dimensions of belief. Much in what is affirmed by pragma¬ 
tism, and by the unreflective modernism to which it gives 
one sort of voice, can be affirmed also by a contemporary 
Christian, sometimes in frank divergence from views often 
maintained hitherto in the name of Christianity. But such 
affirmations, when set in the frame of Christian faith, take 
on meanings beyond any for which naturalism has room. 
Moreover, at certain points the affirmations of Christian 
faith contradict both assertions and denials of naturalistic 
and humanistic modernism. Christian faith rejects the 
view that nature is ultimate; that man is self-sufficient; that 
culture is the supreme object of loyalty, and the ground of 
human salvation. It rejects with equal stubbornness the 
humanism which makes a god of human personality, and 
the inhumane primitivism which holds human personality 
in contempt. 

The base line upon which all these agreements and dif¬ 
ferences converge is the boundary between ways of life and 
thought which lay primary stress upon things that are seen, 
and those which lay primary stress upon things that are not 
seen. Modernism of all varieties belongs to the first class, 
Christianity to the second. For modernism, the center of 


Robert L. Calhoun 


69 

gravity for human life and thought is wholly within the 
range of human experience; for Christianity it is outside 
that range, though crucially related to it. 

This basic distinction has many particular aspects. 
Thus, in its theory of knowledge modernism tends to posi¬ 
tivism and gnosticism, Christianity to faith-realism. The 
one contents itself with the panorama of current events, 
and speaks or acts as though in knowing these, one can 
know all that is of importance for human life. The other 
affirms that even if all phenomena were known by man, and 
nothing beyond these, what is most important of all would 
remain unknown; and further, that this most important 
Reality can never be fully known by man, as one knows a 
color or a pain, but partially at best, by faith, or by reason 
continuously grounded in an act of faith. Modernism 
tends to narrow men’s attention to the immediate present 
and proximate future. Christianity tries to keep men 
aware of all history as a living movement in time, which at 
every moment points beyond itself to what is eternal, and 
has its significance fundamentally in that relationship. 
Modernism regards nature as ultimate and self-explana¬ 
tory; human culture and personality as given natural facts. 
Christianity declares that nature, culture and personality 
are problems, not solutions; and that all of them must find 
theoretic and practical solution, if at all, through faith in 
a sovereign God. 

The essential difference between Christian faith and 
modernism, whether inside or outside the nominally Chris¬ 
tian churches and sects, is a difference of actual perspective 
or orientation. This difference is decisive, and irreconcil¬ 
able except through essential change in one or the other. 
But it should not require anathemas nor bloodless wars of 
extermination from either side. In detailed content and 
aims, they have much ground for common understanding. 


70 The Christian Understanding of Man 

and much to learn from each other. What was true of 
Christianity with respect to Greek philosophy, and with 
respect to Avicennism, is true of Christianity with respect 
to the modernism of our day. We are called on to find once 
more, without compromising the Christian perspective, a 
way both to learn from high-minded non-Christians, and 
to confront them with a reasoned faith in which their own 
best insights and impulses may find more room than mod¬ 
ernism as such can provide. 

This means, in the first place, ungrudging acknowledg¬ 
ment of the positive gains for human life which modernism 
has fostered. It must be said by Christian thinkers in the 
most forthright manner that the explicit turning of men’s 
attention from ultimate to proximate aspects of reality, in 
the manner of the special sciences, is one indispensable fac¬ 
tor in man’s laborious quest after truth and enlightened 
living. When concern with first and final causes crowds 
out due attention to particular details, our whole outlook 
is falsified. Faith in God cannot take the place of patient 
search for understanding of nature and man, nor of pains¬ 
taking technical procedures through which detailed knowl¬ 
edge is put to work. Science and technology are certainly 
not enough, but they are indispensable: and hitherto mod¬ 
ernism, not traditional Christianity, has most candidly 
welcomed them. On the side of theory, moreover, the 
pragmatic insistence on the inseparability of thinking and 
experimental living is a wholesome, though an exaggerated 
and confused, protest against the academic character of 
much philosophy, and of much Christian theology. It is a 
protest paralleled, in the very different key of faith-realism, 
by well known proponents of “ existential thinking.” 
Their way of treating the factor of decision in knowing is 
more congenial to Christian faith than the way of pragma¬ 
tism, which is too fluent and positivistic, but the latter has 


Robert L. Calhoun 


7 1 

at least the merit of underlining a real defect in abstract 
speculation — its loss of contact with actuality. 

At the same time, while giving full credit for sound em¬ 
phasis in modernism, it must be said no less plainly that its 
purview is too narrow and its perspective false. This is 
true both of frankly non-Christian thought, and of these 
forms of liberalism and of “ the social gospel ” within the 
churches which identify the Kingdom of God with a cul¬ 
tural ideal or an improved social order. In trying to be 
realistic about religious tradition, modernism becomes un¬ 
realistic about man. It sees him predominantly if not ex¬ 
clusively as a “ cultured ” being, able to live his life fully 
within the more decorous precincts of current civilization, 
which collectively are often romanticized into a genial sort 
of Magna Mater. It tends to forget, in spite of verbal 
denials, that culture no more than nature is unambigu¬ 
ously good, either actually or potentially; and that even 
less than nature can it lay claim to ultimateness of being. 
Culture is itself floated on human cravings, aspirations 
and habits which emerge from nature, in response to 
stimuli partly natural, partly cultural, and partly (in the 
case of logical and ethical norms, at least) supernatural and 
supra-cultural. Man cannot live by culture alone. His 
fierce, deep-seated drives require at once more ample scope 
and more powerful discipline than culture by itself can 
provide. This Christian faith sees far more clearly than 
modernism, and by so much is more realistic about man. 
It sees him as at once less admirable in his present actuality, 
and more profound in his ultimate significance, than mod¬ 
ernism takes him to be. 

First of all, man the animal is, for Christian faith, a 
creature responsible to his Creator. This is not a contra¬ 
diction but a deepening of one view by another. Man is 
an animal. So far as the tested findings of biologists and 


72 The Christian Understanding of Man 

psychologists go, concerning the observable phenomena of 
human origins, behavior and development, taken as phe¬ 
nomena subject to further interpretation, Christian faith 
has no tenable ground for dissent. No less than modern¬ 
ism, it will be well advised to learn from the scientists what 
they have to say about man wie er geht und steht, and to 
demand for them the utmost freedom to prosecute their 
work in their own way. Censorship of scientific inquiry 
by political or ecclesiastical pressure should be resented as 
hotly by Christians as by any modernist. Moreover, dis¬ 
paragement of what scientists have to say about man within 
the range of their special competence, as though it added 
nothing of real importance to our understanding of our¬ 
selves, is a “ sin against the holy spirit of truth.” If in any 
meaningful sense the heavens declare the glory of God his 
ways are to be discerned no less definitely in the workings 
of germ plasm or of reflex arcs, if these are described with 
comparable clarity and objectivity. This implies that the 
scientist’s findings must be freed from subjection to ex¬ 
traneous coercions, religious or irreligious; and from un¬ 
criticized assumptions covertly smuggled in by the scien¬ 
tists themselves. It is with such extra-scientific dogma, not 
with a clearly delimited biological or psychological theory, 
however abstract or mechanistic in method, that Christian 
faith must conflict. As regards modernism, it is at the point 
of the modernist’s tendency to make positivism itself a creed 
that the Christian understanding of man as animal de¬ 
mands more room, and flatly rejects the modernist dogma. 

For man the animal is unable, as plain matter of fact, 
to live simply in the present. Perhaps a cow does; we have 
no way of knowing. But a man does not. He is aware of 
time, past and future as well as present. He is haunted by 
norms to which, often in contradiction of present desire, 
he tries to measure up. His animality is shot through with 


Robert L. Calhoun 


73 

felt responsibility, and his life is continually in unstable 
equilibrium, as though its center of gravity were outside 
every present moment. To regard such a being as com¬ 
pletely describable in terms of phenomena is to miss the 
most distinctive thing about him: his being haunted by 
what seems a perpetual summons from beyond every pres¬ 
ent appearance. To show how one phenomenal segment 
of his life is connected with other like segments is, we have 
said, necessary to any extensive understanding of his exist¬ 
ence; but such descriptive explanation can never be 
sufficient. 

There is needed further an explanation which pierces 
through the stream of appearances, in act rather than by 
observation; which seeks to enact with insight and in that 
sense to understand the more ultimate truth about man. 
Such enacted understanding is the Christian belief that 
man, this animal, is a responsible creature dependent for 
his being and his worth upon God. In response to God’s 
creative word he has emerged from the stream of organic 
evolution, with ears partly though imperfectly attuned to 
God’s continuing summons, which will not let him rest. 
That summons is partly conveyed, though by no means 
automatically interpreted, through the processes that go on 
within man, and in nature around him; which have their 
ultimate meaning not simply as being themselves, but as 
being vehicles for the divine word to which man is not 
merely subjected but responsible, having therein his dis¬ 
tinctive status as man. 

A corresponding difference of perspective sets off the 
Christian belief about man as social being. Modernism 
tends to deal with culture and with history in the same 
manner as with physical nature, regarding it as self-explana¬ 
tory, and a sufficient frame of reference for the behavior 
of human persons. It is significant and typical that Pro- 


74 The Christian Understanding of Man 

fessor Mead who has given more than usually close atten¬ 
tion to the emergence of human selves, is baffled by the 
problem whether self or society is prior, and yet is not 
embarrassed by that fact — indeed, appears not to notice it. 
He speaks with equal ease of human selves as able to 
emerge only within a human society, and of distinctive 
human society as produced only by human selves. The 
facts of selfhood and social community are simply accepted 
as given, and sociological and psychological descriptions or 
analyses are offered without apparent misgiving as suffi¬ 
cient explanations of the way men live. This applies both 
to human achievement and to human shortcomings. The 
former are thought of as born and nourished wholly by an 
existing culture. In so far as this culture comes to partial 
self-consciousness, it is able to assume responsibility for 
directing its own further development through education 
and other social procedures. Thus only are human 
achievements effected and improvements made, and only 
within this context do ideals have any status. Human 
shortcomings, on the other hand, are attributed simply to 
individual ineptitudes and to cultural lag, both of which 
are regrettable, but definitely remediable by rightly di¬ 
rected human efforts. 

“ Creative intelligence,” in short, is the sufficient key to 
human reformation as well as to control of physical nature. 
The criteria for such improvement also are to be found 
wholly within the range of social experience, in terms of 
the harmonizing of human desires and their satisfactions. 
Perfect permanent harmony is not to be expected, but pro¬ 
gressive harmonization is at once desirable and feasible: 
the true goal of intelligent moral effort. 

Modern Elijahs, very jealous for the God of hosts, are 
apt to make again Elijah’s mistake and suppose that to be 
Christian must mean to reject all this with execration. 


Robert L. Calhoun 


75 

The truth is, I think, that as regards detailed insights, 
hopes and social ideals, the greater part of humanitarian 
modernism at its best should be cherished by contemporary 
Christians, without conceding its ultimate perspective. In 
spite of the closest agreement in detail, which should be 
cultivated and not denied, there must remain a profound 
divergence of meaning, or ultimate reference, that per¬ 
vades all the details of these respective ways of life. For 
modernism, human society is ultimate and human ills are 
curable by it. For Christian faith, man is not simply the 
more or less inept child of a culture. He is that, no doubt. 
But far more ominously he is, individually and collectively, 
a sinner against the eternal word of God. The frame of 
reference for his conduct is not merely the behavior pat¬ 
terns of an existing culture, but the fabric of a world order 
in which all cultures are grounded, and which is itself 
continuously molded by God’s will. Against this fabric 
not only individuals and groups, but whole cultures stand 
under judgment, and in so far as they fail grossly to meet 
its demands, whether by overt rebellion or merely through 
inertia, they die. 

The requirement which thus lies upon men is not simply 
the constraint of stubborn facts, but the obligation implicit 
in worth and in the liability of persons to its claims. Such 
obligation differs from factual compulsion (from which it 
is, of course, never entirely separate) in that the response 
for which it calls is not a forced surrender but a voluntary 
devotion, in which the responding self is not constricted 
but fulfilled, or realized. The summons is, in principle, 
a demand for willingness to lose one’s life for the Kingdom 
of God, and thus to find it. It is a call to the highest good 
of which man is capable; to the fulfilment, not the destruc¬ 
tion, of his root nature, and the satisfaction of his most dis¬ 
tinctive hungers. For Christian faith, the call to such 


76 The Christian Understanding of Man 

devotion comes centrally through Jesus Christ, and the 
voice that speaks most clearly in his life and death is trusted, 
in Christian living, as the voice of God. To the more 
superficial, so-called “ natural ” inclinations of men (in¬ 
cluding Christians) toward self-indulgence and self-glori¬ 
fication, such a call is either unintelligible or a positive 
affront, and the usual response is apathy or refusal. This 
is sin. It is not merely to reject some demand or habit 
pattern of society. This, though entitled to its own proper 
meed of love and devotion, is always partly and in some 
respects radically of another mind than the mind of Jesus 
Christ. To sin is not then simply to disobey society but 
to contradict the will of God, which is the deepest law of 
man’s own being. 

The conflicts which arise thence are among the most 
profound and most destructive with which we have to cope 
in ourselves. Not merely pain, nor frustration of partic¬ 
ular desires, nor collision of individual wills, nor even 
social conflicts between competing groups. These can be 
endured, inside fairly wide limits, without essential disin¬ 
tegration of human selves; and within somewhat narrower 
limits, they can even be regarded as conducive to growth 
toward maturity. Of the really disruptive processes which 
break down human selfhood, some are disasters which men 
suffer but do not cause — deterioration of brain cells, star¬ 
vation of bodies and minds, overloading of the weak in the 
natural struggle for existence; but some spring directly 
from the self-contradiction which is sin — man’s vain 
attempt to deny his own humanity by denying his respon¬ 
sibility to God. Thence arise the destructive tensions 
within individual selves, whose symptoms are indecision, 
vacillation, cowardice, anxiety and moral anguish; or, still 
worse, acquired cruelty and brutal callousness. Thence 
arise also, in large part, the insidious treacheries, prides 


Robert L. Calhoun 


77 

and fears which take shape in the oppression of weaker 
groups by stronger; and as the stress of group conflict in¬ 
creases, issue in the ghastly inhumanities of despotism and 
war. It is this profound self-contradiction in man, this 
denial of the responsibility which makes him human, that 
breaks down selves and societies from within. Natural 
disasters can be weathered, human struggle endured and 
turned to account, so long as men are true to themselves 
by acknowledging claims superior to their own wills. But 
when irresponsibility becomes the rule, both selves and 
societies disintegrate. 

Such denial is at once an act and a disposition, individual 
and communal. It is the disposition of every infant, every 
adult, every social group (including the organized 
churches and sects), and every culture to affirm its own 
wants and will as ultimate. It is also each particular deci¬ 
sion which expresses and confirms this tendency. Mankind 
and every human self is “ fallen ” not from some original 
perfection (which no creature has ever had), but simply 
into the plight of selfhood responsible yet not truly respon¬ 
sive to God. This “ fall ” is at once a rise from and a lapse 
below animal innocence. Other animals cannot be “ de¬ 
monic.” Men and their cultures not only can, but con¬ 
tinually become so in fact. In failing or refusing to ac¬ 
knowledge the sovereignty of God, they deny their own 
nature as human, and condemn themselves thereby to in¬ 
ner conflict, incurable by anything they themselves can do, 
which tends continually to their own destruction. 

This demonic tendency in human life modernism can 
neither understand nor cope with. By its own secularistic 
optimism, indeed, it helps, quite unintentionally, to foster 
both the self-assertiveness and the delusive self-confidence 
which lead again and again to the savage inhumanities 
which modernists, like all decent folk, deplore. This in- 


78 The Christian Understanding of Man 

dictment rests also, of course, against organized Christen¬ 
dom. Professed Christians of modernistic temper share 
the tendency to overvalue human culture, and are all too 
easily sucked in to the defense of their own segment of it 
against other segments, subordinating the supra-cultural 
claims of the gospel to the demands of nation, folk or class. 
Traditionalistic Christians, in essentially similar fashion, 
have always been prone to confuse their acknowledged 
responsibility to God with the right to identify the de¬ 
mands of the actual church, or some part of it, with the di¬ 
vine will. Entrenchment of vested interests, repression of 
dissent, and persecutions are the not unnatural outcome; 
and the peculiar ruthlessness of religious wars bears witness 
to the liability of churches of all sorts to demonic self¬ 
exaltation. But in Christian faith, fallible men are con¬ 
tinually being confronted anew with the majesty of God 
which condemns, and the love of God which can destroy, 
all demonries. In modernism, there is sincere abhorrence 
of these, but neither clear insight into their nature nor 
power to nullify their spells. Intelligence and good will 
are indispensable, but not enough. The enlistment of 
emotion and the other powerful drives mobilized in a tran¬ 
scendental religious faith is needed also. 

In its understanding of man’s origin, duty and present 
plight, therefore, Christian faith differs crucially from mod¬ 
ernism, for all that they have much in common. They di¬ 
verge, finally, in their understanding of human destiny. 
For modernism, as we have seen, man’s destiny is in his own 
hands, and his salvation depends finally upon himself. This 
salvation is conceived in terms of earthly progress, effected 
through individual learnings and growth, and social amel¬ 
ioration. The ideal is by no means a vulgar or a trivial one, 
though it can easily be cheapened — more easily, perhaps, 
than the harsh judgments of prophetic religion (though 


Robert L. Calhoun 


79 

these also are often turned into cloaks for all-too-human 
arrogance and cruelty). In the modernist ideal of the 
good life, all that is choice in human culture in the regions 
of intellect, aesthetic appreciation, moral sensitiveness and 
vigor, humane love and loyalty has its place. For progres¬ 
sive realization of this ideal, modernism looks to man, to 
his natural capacities, and the natural and social stimuli 
which can be made to play upon them. Education, in the 
broadest and most literal sense, is the way of salvation; the 
drawing out, in a fluid series of controlled situations, of a 
more and more effectively selected sum of human responses. 
Such progress, limited only by the duration of human life 
on the earth, is the modernist’s ruling hope. 

Once more Christian faith dissents, not because at par¬ 
ticular points this view is bad, but because with all its good 
it leaves out what is basic to the whole, and thereby falsifies 
the total perspective. Christian faith denies, first of all, 
that salvation of any kind is to be had except from God. 
That men can learn and grow, and that they may well come 
better to understand and control their natural and cultural 
environment and themselves, it need not question. But 
even such learning and growth, it declares, can take place 
only by the grace of God. Not man but God maintains the 
equilibria of nature, and the compensatory rhythms of his¬ 
tory. Cultures grow and decline not mainly because of 
what men do, but mainly because of what God does, around 
men and within them. Apart from his providence, not even 
the wavering steps we call human progress could be made. 

But Christian faith says more: that such progress is not 
in itself to be called salvation. What men most deeply 
need is not bigger and better things, nor even finer and 
finer individuals and social orders. These certainly, if they 
can be had, but these will never be enough. What men 
most deeply need is blessedness, “ the peace of God, which 


80 The Christian Understanding of Man 

passeth all understanding.” Whatever the future may 
hold, some men and women have found here stability and 
fullness of life with God. But it comes from beyond the 
here-and-now, to men and women for whom this present 
has seemed to open, like a glass become translucent, upon 
incomprehended depths of being and of good before which 
human restlessness is stilled. Not that struggle ceases, nor 
that sin is canceled. Man does not become a superman, 
immune to these things. The point is that somehow, be¬ 
yond human knowing and doing, peace dawns in the midst 
of struggle, without in the least annulling its arduousness 
and pain. 

A part of the truth is that meaning comes into the tur¬ 
moil, which before it did not have, of a sort which man had 
neither foreseen nor specifically desired. But more than 
meaning. There comes conviction of the overshadowing 
presence of God. Not this or that detail of the present 
landscape need be changed. Only the whole is made new. 
The presence of a loved one, or devotion to a new-found 
cause, may similarly make nothing different and every¬ 
thing new within a limited area, for a while. The presence 
of God to those who believe makes a new heaven and a 
new earth, for life. It should not relax but quicken the 
struggle for specific human betterments; only the struggle 
now is lived and seen in the light of eternity. This dimen¬ 
sion of being modernism by itself does not recognize, nor 
count as a factor for human destiny. To Christian faith, it 
is the chief thing of all. 

Herein is the dilemma of humanitarian modernism: that 
it condemns its own best impulses to continual thwarting 
and recurrent disaster. This is, for Christian faith, a simple 
variant of the central dilemma of mankind. Man is a prob¬ 
lem to himself not chiefly because of his more obvious vices, 
but because the very strength in him, the better part of his 


Robert L. Calhoun 


81 


effort and aspiration, so continually goes wrong. That 
greed and lying should get him into trouble need be no 
matter for surprise. But that truth-seeking and generosity 
should betray him is a cruel puzzle. No wonder that in 
bewilderment men turn again and again from the disap¬ 
pointing ways of genteel culture to the primitive devotions 
of tribalism, war and tyranny. But that way madness lies. 
Inhumanity is no solution for the dilemmas of human liv¬ 
ing: for men cannot by volition cease to be men, and their 
efforts to do so aggravate the death-dealing conflicts among 
them and within them. The only real cure is for them to 
be made, by the grace of God, not less but more fully hu¬ 
mane. Truthseeking and generosity need more ample 
room. 





















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THE MARXIST ANTHROPOLOGY AND 
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION 
OF MAN 


by 

N. N. Alexeiev 



THE MARXIST ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE 
CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF MAN 


1. INTRODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS 

The comparison of two such divergent conceptions as the 
Christian religion on the one hand and the Marxist soci¬ 
ology, which is hostile to religion, on the other, is only pos¬ 
sible if some common basis can be found. In this article 
it is held that philosophy provides such a basis: philosophy 
in the sense of the consummation of knowledge in its ra¬ 
tional and conceptual form, in so far as it endeavors to in¬ 
vestigate the nature of the objective world — in this par¬ 
ticular instance the nature of man. Philosophy therefore 
investigates the structure of human life, of that which is 
typically “ human,” rather than the concrete conditions of 
human life. It is right, moreover, that the philosophical 
approach to the problem of man — as well as all the other 
problems with which the Christian is faced — should be 
found on the threshold, or so to speak, in the “ ante-room ” 
of the Christian religion; such a philosophical approach is 
also to be found on the threshold of Marxism, if one is to 
regard the latter as a unique totalitarian conception of life, 
comprising the unity of theory and practice. 

Only on this “ threshold ” is it possible to examine the 
problems of Christianity and Marxism as objects of thought 
and to compare them. Even the Christian faith, as well as 
the Marxist view of life (which ultimately is dependent on 
a belief, no matter whether it is religious or not, or whether 
it represents some other form of faith) is supra-rational and 
independent of general rational understanding. It is, how- 

85 


86 The Christian Understanding of Man 

ever, scarcely conceivable that the Marxist and the Chris¬ 
tian can understand each other as “ believers,” that is, in 
the practical sense; whereas in the philosophical “ ante¬ 
room,” beyond the considerations of practicality, such a 
mutual approach is not impossible. It is this which justi¬ 
fies the philosophical form of this paper. 

2 . THE MARXIST AND THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF MAN IN THE 
LIGHT OF POSSIBLE POINTS OF CONTACT 

A. The Marxist Conception of Man. 

(a) The Marxist conception of man is a product of 
philosophical and theological speculations which originate 
in the Hegelian school, which for their part are the product 
of the struggle with Christian faith and Christian theology. 

Anyone who has studied the history of Marxist doctrine 
is convinced that the deepest philosophical roots of Marx¬ 
ism, and especially of the Marxist anthropology, are to be 
found in the theological controversies which arose in the 
Hegelian school after the death of Hegel. 

Engels himself has described briefly the history of this 
philosophical-theological struggle within the Hegelian 
school . 1 An important episode in this struggle was the 
birth of the new German atheism. The time came, as 
Engels said, when the “ Hegelian gang ” “ couldn’t go on 
with the deception ” that Christianity was a barrier. “ All 
the fundamental principles of Christianity, even those of 
what has hitherto been called religion as a whole, have 
fallen before the remorseless assault of reason; the absolute 
idea claims to be the foundation of a new era. The great 
revolution of which the French philosophers of the last 
century were only the precursors has reached its fulfilment 

i In an early work, Schelling und die Ofjenbarung, 1842, Marx-Engels, 
historical-critical edition, publ. Karl Marx Institute, Moscow, hereinafter 
referred to as ME., I, 2, p. 184. 


N. N. Alexeiev 


8 7 

in the realm of thought. Protestant philosophy from Des¬ 
cartes onwards is finished; a new age has begun. And it is 
the sacred obligation of everybody who is obedient to the 
course prescribed by the self-development of his spirit, to 
translate the stupendous result into the consciousness of the 
nation, and to erect it into the basic principle of German 
life.” 2 

In this quotation we find the bridge which, in the opin¬ 
ion of Engels, connects the new antireligious tendencies 
with Protestantism. Marx was also of the opinion, writing 
in the Deutsch-franzdsische Jahrhucher (1844), that “ Ger¬ 
many’s revolutionary past ” lay in the Reformation. “ As 
the revolution of those days began with a monk, so today 
it must begin in the brain of the philosopher.” But, Marx 
adds: “ if Protestantism was not the true solution, it was at 
any rate a true indication of the task. It was no longer a 
question of the conflict of the layman with the priest out¬ 
side himself, but with his own inner priest (mit seinem 
eigenen inneren Pfaffen ), with his ‘ clerical ’ nature.” 8 
The conflict with his “ * clerical ’ nature ” meant the criti¬ 
cism of the religious consciousness and of religion as such. 
But in so far as this criticism, in the opinion of the Hege¬ 
lians, is already achieved in the Hegelian philosophy, and 
involves the rejection of the religious aspect of this phi¬ 
losophy, the issue is really the banishment from the field of 
philosophical speculation of the idea of anything above 
and beyond human nature, of an absolute spirit indepen¬ 
dent of man, and instead the identification of the absolute 
with man. With the fulfilment of this task Hegelianism 
changes, of its own accord, into a kind of philosophical an¬ 
thropology or anthroposophy. 

The question still remains, however: how is the term 
“ Man ” to be understood in this anthropology? We know 
2 Loc. cit. t p. 185. 8 ME., I, 1 (2), p. 615. 


88 


The Christian Understanding of Man 


that Marx’ and Engels’ contemporaries answered this ques¬ 
tion in very different ways. The most famous and influen¬ 
tial of them, Feuerbach, understood by “ man ” an abstract 
being, a human genus, the “ universal ” ( allgemein ) in 
man. The so-called “ critical criticism ” of Bruno Bauer 
and those who agreed with him vigorously attacked Feuer¬ 
bach’s abstract conception. They attempted to substitute 
for his abstract human Wesen the concrete human indi¬ 
vidual. This concrete human individual of the “ critical 
criticism ” did not appear to the most radical of the Neo- 
Hegelians, Max Stirner, to be concrete enough. He there¬ 
fore raised into a philosophical principle his philosophy of 
the “ self ” ( Einzigen) , the egotistical individual who, re¬ 
leased from all social and moral bonds, appears in puris 
naturalibus (Engels’ phrase). 

In this controversy with its conflicting views of man, 
Marx and Engels had a peculiar position, for they stood 
midway between Feuerbach and Stirner. From Feuerbach 
they took over the thought that the notion “ man ” was not 
covered by the idea of the “ self alone ” ( Einzigen ); Stirner 
contributed the idea that the elements of struggle and of 
self-interest could not be dismissed from any conception of 
man. 4 In Stirner’s onesided egoism Engels finds something 
which is in principle true, and which communist doctrine 
cannot but assimilate. 

And what is true in it is this: that we will not be impelled to 
action unless our self-interest is touched; in this sense, therefore, 
we become communists by reason of our egoism, and we want 
to be men out of sheer egoism, apart from any material hopes. 

. . . Stirner is right when he rejects Feuerbach’s notion of man, 

4 For the history of this discussion see D. Koigen, Zur Vorgeschichte des 
modernen philosophischen Sozialismus in Deutschland (Bern, 1901) ; N. N. 
Alexeiev, Die Naturwissenschaften und Sozialzuissenschaften (Moscow, 
1911); A. Cornu, Karl Marx, Vhomme et Vceuvre. De VHegelianisme au 
materialisme historique (Paris, 1934). 


N. N. Alexeiev 89 

at least the notion embodied in his Wesen des Christentums; 
the Feuerbach type of man is derived from God, Feuerbach ar¬ 
rives at his concept of man through God, and in this way 
“ man ” is still surrounded by the halo of theological abstrac¬ 
tion. . . . We have to proceed from empiricism and material¬ 
ism if we want to be correct in our thinking, and especially in 
our conception of “ man we must deduce the general from 
the particular, not from itself or from the air, a la Hegel. All 
these are obvious platitudes, and have already been admitted 
by Feuerbach. 5 

Here is the kernel of the whole approach to the Marxist 
concept of man, which we shall define more closely in what 
follows. 

(b) A definitely developed anthropology contradicting 
the idea of philosophical cosmology constitutes the ker¬ 
nel of the Marxist conception of man. 

The Marxist conception of man was the result of the 
conflict waged by the young Marx and Engels against the 
abstract anthropology of their time, as represented by 
Feuerbach, Bauer and Stirner. In this controversy Marx 
and Engels contended that a philosophical anthropology 
which is concerned only with the “ isolated individual,” 
with the “ individual man as such,” ignoring his relation to 
other men and to his social environment, is largely errone¬ 
ous. In this sense, then, the repudiation of such anthro¬ 
pology by Marx is an incontestable fact. The situation, 
however, changes when we examine Marxism in the light 
of a philosophical cosmology which seeks to dissolve the 
concept of man into an aggregate of nonhuman factors and 
elements. We then see that early Marxism regarded man, 
not as an isolated individual but as “ man in society,” as 
primary, and was therefore more inclined to be anthropo¬ 
logical than cosmological. Marxism can therefore be con¬ 
sidered as “ anthropological,” in the sociological sense of 
5 ME., Ill, 1, p. 6-7. 


go The Christian Understanding of Man 

the word. One proof of this is that in the early writings 
of Marx and Engels there is no trace of any tendency to 
erect nature into something absolute, self-consistent, con¬ 
trasted with man. On the contrary: nature has here a very 
original, sociological, and in a certain sense an anthropo¬ 
logical meaning. Nature, Marx says, “ if taken in the ab¬ 
stract as something entirely apart from man has no signifi¬ 
cance for man.” 6 “ The extremely important question of 
the relation of man to nature, from which all ‘ works un¬ 
speakably sublime ’ beyond ‘ substance * and ‘ self-aware¬ 
ness * proceed, vanishes of its own accord when one realizes 
that the famous ‘ unity of man with nature * is as old as 
industry.” 7 Nature, or the visible world immediately sur¬ 
rounding us, is not something “ which has suddenly ap¬ 
peared out of eternity, always the same, but is the product 
of industry and of society.” It is “ a historical product,” 
the result of the activity of a whole series of generations. 8 
One can, of course, speak of the “ priority of external na¬ 
ture,” but this is not the nature in which we live today, 
and which, when considered in the abstract apart from 
man, becomes in itself an abstraction. 

In other words: if man is a product of nature, nature is 
also the product of man. When considered from this stand¬ 
point the Marxist philosophy is not a materialistic cos¬ 
mology but an anthropology. That is why Marx defines 
his philosophical position as a “ positive or real human¬ 
ism.” He identifies the terms materialism, naturalism, hu¬ 
manism and communism, opposing them to spiritualism 
and idealism. He even says that his own approach to na¬ 
ture is anthropological, 9 which fully substantiates the ac¬ 
curacy of our assertion. 

(c) In later developments of the Marxist system the an- 

6 ME., I, 3,8, 170. 8 ibid., p. 33. 

7 ME., I, 3, p. 170; I, B, 5, p. 33. 9 ME., I, B, 3, p. 122. 


N. N. Alexeiev 


9i 

thropology of the earlier period passes gradually into a 
naturalistic cosmology, though this has not conspicuously 
influenced the Marxist concept of man. 

The cosmological attitude of later Marxism is exempli¬ 
fied in what is now called the “ dialectic of nature,” which 
is actually a subdivision of the materialist philosophy of 
evolution in general. Here the concept of man is grounded 
on a natural science raised to the level of philosophy, and 
one which claims to have knowledge not only of natural 
phenomena but of the “ thing-in-itself.” Engels roundly 
rejects the position according to which the “ thing-in-itself ” 
is unknowable. 10 In this manner the “ nature ” of the 
earlier writings (“ not an absolute self-sufficient essence 
(Wesen)“ not a ‘ substance ’ ”) is transformed into its 
antithesis: into an “ absolute substance.” Engels does not 
repudiate the thought that man is in the position of being 
able to cause changes within nature, though at the same 
time he points out that in all nature-changes there remains 
something permanent, namely, the general conception 
(Inbegriff) of the various forms of physical activity or the 
interchange of natural powers. That, according to Engels, 
is actually the conception of “ substance ” in Spinoza’s 
sense: “ Substance ” as the causa sui . 11 This absolute sub¬ 
stance is simply matter in the dialectic sense, not the “ mat¬ 
ter ” of materialism as it is commonly understood. This 
idea of matter dialectically conceived was foreshadowed in 
the Greek philosophers in their doctrine of Trp&rr) v\rj. 
The idea of chaos in antiquity, Engels says, is to be found 
again in Laplace, who makes of it a universal formless foun¬ 
dation for the physical world. In this primeval, formless 
matter there originate, by means of a continuous process of 
differentiation, all the forms of physical existence. In the 

10 See Dialektik der Natur (Moscow, 1932), pp. 6-7. 

11 Ibid., p. 15. 


92 The Christian Understanding of Man 

so-called Einleitung zur Dialektik der Natur (1880) we 
read words which are literally a repetition, in Ernst Haeck¬ 
el’s style, of the current ideas underlying popular naturalis¬ 
tic evolutionism. According to this philosophy man is only 
the sum of “ nonhuman ” substances and purely physical 
elements; his existence is completely conditioned by the 
nature of an all pervading physical substance. Little re¬ 
mains of the anthropology which is expressed, for example, 
in Engels’ famous pamphlet on Ludwig Feuerbach. 12 

All that distinguishes this “ dialectic of nature ” from the 
other types of evolutionary thought is what remains of the 
influence of the Hegelian philosophy. The Marxist dia¬ 
lectic includes three laws describing the historical develop¬ 
ment of all things: the law of the transformation of quantity 
into quality, the law of the interpenetration of oppo¬ 
sites, and the law of negation. For the understanding of 
the Marxist theory of development it is the first of these in 
particular which is important. According to it, develop¬ 
ment does not consist merely in continuity but presupposes 
sudden leaps. The principle of continuity is realized only 
in quantitative changes, whereas the birth of a new quality 
is always a jump, the creation of something new which is 
not implied in the lower stages of development. For ex¬ 
ample: life originates in continuous quantitative changes 
in dead matter; on reaching a certain level these changes 
result in a jump forward from the dead to the living, and 
in this way a new quality is created, namely, the category 
of life. In the same manner, human life is a sudden leap 
forward from animal life. We know that the controversy 
about the essential meaning of thesb newly created qualities 
of existence has split Soviet philosophy into two groups: 

12 The last anthropological elements disappear completely in Lenin’s 
exposition of the views of Engels, which we find in the well known book 
Materialismus und Empiriokritizismus. 


N. N. Alexeiev 


93 

the mechanists and the dialecticians. The first group 
minimizes the significance of the newly emerged qualities; 
the second accentuates it so much that it succumbs to the 
two heresies of vitalism and idealism. 13 About the year 
1930, all such philosophical debates which allow for the pos¬ 
sibility of basing a new concept of man on Leninism were 
forbidden. Stalin himself has assumed the right to solve 
philosophical problems by decree. 

When we consider only these cosmological characteris¬ 
tics of Marxism, we gain the impression that it represents 
a kind of naturalistic philosophy with a cosmological tinge, 
and that the Marxist concept of man is incomprehensible 
without this philosophy. But in so doing, we lose quite 
half of the Marxist system of thought and, indeed, some of 
the most important elements in the view of man as taught 
by Marx and Engels. 

(d) For Marxism the nature of man is in the first place 
conditioned by human interrelations and by man's place in 
society, the essence of the latter relationship being not that 
of existing social forms, because such forms are in them¬ 
selves contradictory and are responsible for the “ divided ” 
“ estranged ” nature of man. 

That man is essentially a social being, that the individual 
without society is a pure abstraction, that society alone, not 
the individual man, constitutes reality — at the beginning 
of the nineteenth century these and other similar supposi¬ 
tions were no more than commonplaces. When Marx re¬ 
peats this thesis in his early writings he is only reflecting 
the spirit of his age. For us it is not the general thesis but 
the more specific nature of its contents which Marxism has 
introduced into it which is instructive and important. The 
unique thing about this “ sociological anthropology ” in 

13 Cf. the “ Transactions of the Second Conference of the Marx-Lenin 
Scientific Institute,” lectures by A. Deborin, Moscow, 1929. 


94 The Christian Understanding of Man 

the Marxist sense is that Marx regards the social nature of 
man, as expressed in existing social forms, as something 
“ incomplete/’ The real social character of man is not to 
be sought in contemporary society. For this possesses no 
solidarity, nor is it organic as the representatives of the va¬ 
rious sociological and politico-philosophical theories of the 
Restoration period understood it to be. All these socio¬ 
logical doctrines are characterized by the tendency to as¬ 
cribe final and absolute significance to one section of his¬ 
torical reality, to the positive forms of social life and social 
institutions. Notwithstanding the fact that even Marxism 
reflects the historical spirit of the period in which Marx 
lives, this philosophy, more than any of those which have 
been mentioned, finds such an absolute idealization foreign 
to its nature. For Marx, every social form is incomplete, 
primitive communism included; for social perfection lies 
in the future alone. Marx was a product of the Restoration 
period, a student of the Hegelian philosophy, from which 
he evolved the so-called historical spirit; in spite of this, 
however, and in this he differs from his contemporaries, he 
breathes a new spirit into the soul of the Restoration, and 
infuses into it the breath of a new revolution. 

Marx opposes the social theories of the Restoration pe¬ 
riod with his antinomian and dialectical teaching about so¬ 
ciety. He sees society as a struggle of mutually antagonistic 
forms of social energy, not as the realization of social har¬ 
mony and solidarity. From this conception of society there 
springs not only the idea of the class war, but also that of 
the inner contradictions within capitalist society, which he 
has described in his main work. His marked repudiation 
of the existing order of society is expressed most conspicu¬ 
ously in the Marxist doctrine of the state; for in his time the 
state was being increasingly regarded as an absolute. The 
state, according to Marx, is an organization for the purpose 


N. N. Alexeiev 


95 

of class war and of social exploitation. The impartial regu¬ 
lation and mitigation of social antitheses forms no part of 
its purpose, therefore it has no social or moral value. Its 
origin coincides with that of social-economic classes, and 
it is doomed to disappear completely with the arrival of 
the future classless society. 

For this reason, therefore, “ man as a product of existing 
historical forms ” does not provide any adequate concep¬ 
tion of the real nature of man; for this “ man ” is not an 
organically unified whole, he is divided, or incomplete 
( entfremdet ) , 14 The social origin of this inner division 
consists, for Marx, in the division of labor, particularly in 
the division of physical and intellectual work. “ The divi¬ 
sion of labor,” we read in the Deutsche Ideologie, “ shows 
that as long as men live in a natural order of society there 
will be a cleavage between general and individual interests; 
so long as his activity is not voluntary, but dictated by natu¬ 
ral considerations, 15 man’s own achievements take the form 
of a power which confronts him and subjugates him, instead 
of being dominated by him.” 16 These relationships be¬ 
tween man and nature will be ordered quite differently in 
a free communistic society. 

In communist society, where every man can develop himself 
in any way he chooses, instead of having to move in a circum¬ 
scribed sphere of activity, society will control all the means of 
production and will make it possible for me to do one thing 
today, another tomorrow; in the morning, for me to hunt, in 
the afternoon, to fish, in the evening, to look after animals, 
and then to criticize according as I think fit, but without having 
to be either huntsman, fisherman or critic. 17 

14 Marx took this idea of Entfremdung from the Hegelian philosophy, 
though he tried to give it a new meaning. 

iis Marx’s word naturwiichsig means literally “ indigenous.” — Trans. 

is ME., I, 5, p. 29. 

17 Ibid., p. 23. 


g6 The Christian Understanding of Man 

In such conditions the sense of incompletion will com¬ 
pletely disappear. 

The same idea, rather differently expressed, recurs in 
later Marxism in the well known doctrine of the “ fetish 
character ” of goods in the first volume of Das Kapital. In 
one sense this theory provides the key to the understanding 
of the philosophical basis of the whole of the Marxist an¬ 
thropology. It endeavors, with the aid of an example 
drawn from the elementary economic phenomenon of 
exchange-value, to explain the innermost meaning of the 
social relations of man which have originated in this ex¬ 
perience of Entfremdung. The concrete embodiment of 
exchange value is the commodity. This is usually an ob¬ 
ject possessing natural properties: color, weight, etc. Yet 
there is no such inherent quality which can be described 
as exchange value, although this does not prevent some of 
the representatives of political economy, as it is usually 
understood, from confusing exchange value with such 
qualities as are inherent in the commodity. 

Here we are faced by the phenomenon of the domination 
of man by certain false ideas. The mystery of commodity- 
form consists in the fact that 

it mirrors for men the social character of their own labor, as 
an objective character attaching to the labor products them¬ 
selves, as a natural property of these things. Consequently the 
social relation of the producers to the sum of their own labor 
presents itself to them as a social relation, not between them¬ 
selves, but between the products of their own labor. Thanks 
to this transference of qualities the labor products become com¬ 
modities, transcendental or social things, which are at the 
same time perceptible by our senses. In like manner the im¬ 
pression which the light reflected from an object makes upon 
the retina is perceived, not as a subjective stimulation of that 
organ, but in the form of a concrete object existing outside 
the eye. But in vision, light actually passes from one thing, 
the external object, to another thing, the eye. On the other 
hand, the commodity form, and the value relation between the 


N. N. Alexeiev 


97 

labor products which finds expression in the commodity form, 
have nothing to do with the physical properties of the com¬ 
modities or with the material relations that arise out of these 
physical properties. 18 

Man lives, therefore, under the domination of phantoms, 
illusions and ghosts which arise out of the confusion of 
social relationships. In order to dispel these illusions and 
fetishes which subjugate man it is enough to place such 
social relations on a rational basis and to systematize the 
labor which is natural to him. If we wish to envisage the 
disappearance of fetishism and the sense of incompletion 
( Entfremdung) we have only to imagine a society of free 
men who “ work under a system of socially owned means of 
production and regard their individual talents for work 
consciously as a social activity.” 19 

The ideas described above suggest that the human his¬ 
tory of the “ fetish ” period was no more than the history 
of the twilight of man’s reason. Just as with Feuerbach, 
who believed that “ what man declares about God he can 
in all truthfulness assert about himself,” 20 so also do we 
find the same conception in Marx: whatever he asserts 
about the commodity form he is able truthfully to assert 
about his own social relations and his own particular share 
in the division of labor. 21 As we have said, it is enough 
to expose this falsehood in order to see things as they actu- 

is Kapital, Eng. trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (Everyman), I, 45. The 
author has not cited the whole passage, but has rather paraphrased the 
first half and pointed out that the Entfremdung, or sense of incompletion, 
in man is due to his having to regard the product of his labor as something 
independent of himself. The fetishistic character of a commodity about 
which Marx speaks might be elucidated by the establishment of a “ numi¬ 
nous ” relationship between it and the producer. — Translator’s note. 

19 Das Kapital, p. 45. 

20 Works, VII, 48-49. 

21 For the place of Feuerbach in Marx’s works see A. Livy, La Philoso¬ 
phic de Feuerbach et son influence sur la litterature allemande (1904), and 
G. Stammacher, Das philosophisch-okonomische System des Marxismus 
(Leipzig, 1909). 


98 The Christian Understanding of Man 

ally are. Here we see the most important difference be¬ 
tween Feuerbach and Marx: the former believed that the 
exposure of the religious consciousness should be under¬ 
taken by the rational criticism of the philosopher, whereas 
Marx believed that the task of exposure would be achieved 
through the objective process of human history. For 
Feuerbach religion was only an error, whereas for Marx, 
on the contrary, “ fetishism ” is the result of the natural 
conditions of an economic activity. 

(e) According to Marx’s view man is a historical entity 
which is to be understood in naturalistic and materialistic 
terms. But Marxist naturalism does not allow man to be 
absorbed into Nature, nor does it deny the basic difference 
between man and animal. 

A characteristic of many of the social theories of the 
Restoration period is that they deny the individuality of 
personality. For them, man was no monad, no ego living 
in a state of self-sufficiency, but a relation. 

There is lacking in Marx any conception of man as an 
absolute, self-evident entity (eine absolute Substanz). 
Even Hegel’s notion which endeavors to lose the individual 
ego in universal absolute spirit, has, in the view of Marx, 
too much of the flavor of substantiality. He criticizes Hegel 
because, in his Phanomenologie, he identifies “ man ” with 
“ self.” “ The self, however, is only individuality con¬ 
ceived in terms of pure abstraction. . . . The abstract, 
static self is simply man as an abstract egoist, or egoism 
elevated into a state of thought through pure abstrac¬ 
tion.” 22 The actual human self is only a historical phe¬ 
nomenon. As such it possesses no “ eidetic ” reality and no 
permanent form. Marx attempts to prove the latter asser- 

22 "Das fur sich abstrahierte und fixierte Selbst ist der Mensch als 
abstrakter Egoist, der in seiner reinen Abstraktion zum Denken erhobene 
Egoismus " (ME., I, 3, p. 158) . 


N. N. Alexeiev 


99 

tion by drawing a distinction between the so-called “ per¬ 
sonal ” and the “ accidental ” individual. This distinction 
is for him “ not a conceptual difference, but a historical 
fact.” 23 It has a “ different meaning for different periods.” 
Class (Stand ), for example, was an attribute of human 
personality in the Middle Ages, whereas in the eighteenth 
century it was something quite accidental. With the 
change in economic conditions the structure of human per¬ 
sonality is changed. Personality as such is ephemeral: its 
constitutive elements are the result only of methods of pro¬ 
duction, of economic modes of life and activity, of the tech¬ 
nique of labor. It is therefore scarcely worth while to 
look for “ personal ” elements in Marx’s philosophy, as, 
for example, Berdyaev does in an article entitled " Per - 
sonne humaine et Marxiste” in a collective work Com- 
munisme et les Chretiens (Paris, 1937). 

The Marxist criticism of the capitalist system does not 
begin with personality in the usual sense, but with the idea 
of the human individual as a definite physical, bodily exist¬ 
ence, consisting of flesh and blood, and natural, material 
instincts set in motion by and inseparable from the society 
which conditions his life. We should not forget that the 
“ egoistic man ” in Stimer’s sense is not individual, but 
collective, and that this conception was the starting-point of 
the Marxist anthropology. Added to this are the influences 
of French philosophy derived from practical materialism, 
that is, from a hedonistic and eudaemonistic ethic. We 
know that Marx himself liked to describe communism as 
a kind of “ practical materialism.” It is also easy to show 
that these motives are found in the later developments of 
the ideas of Marx and Engels. In a letter to the Russian 
sociologist, P. L. Lavrow (November 12, 1874), Engels 
says that one difference between man and the beasts is that 
23 me., 1, 5, p. 60. 


ioo The Christian Understanding of Man 


the former struggles for pleasure whereas the latter struggle 
only for their existence. The struggle for pleasure, there¬ 
fore, he adds, is the highest aim of all social reforms and 
ultimately of socialism. 

Marxism is not only influenced by so-called “ practical 
materialism ” but it has at the same time absorbed a large 
dose of materialist philosophy as such. The only expres¬ 
sions of the “ materialistic interpretation of history ” which 
Marx formulates bear evident traces of ordinary material¬ 
ism. Consciousness, so we read in the Deutsche Ideologie, 
not only depends on physical existence, but merely repre¬ 
sents the ideological “ reflex and echo ” of the material life 
process. This expression “ reflex and echo ” 24 shows that 
the founders of Marxism have themselves given occasion 
for a so-called “ mechanistic ” interpretation of their teach¬ 
ing. “ Even the mirages in the human brain,” Marx adds, 
after having applied this expression “ reflex and echo,” 

are inevitable sublimations of a life process which can be ma¬ 
terially and empirically determined and preconditioned by 
material considerations. Morality, religion, metaphysics and 
other ideologies and the types of life which correspond to them 
no longer retain any semblance of independence. They have 
no history; they have no development; but men change the 
material processes of production and develop material com¬ 
munications, and in and through these changes in reality they 
also alter their thought and the product of their thought. 25 

What Engels often said later about the independent validity 
of an ideology was only an accommodation to the obvious 
facts of experience. 

It is, therefore, easy to understand why Marx and Engels 
were so enthusiastic about the work of Darwin: so far as 
social science was concerned, they were actually Darwinists 
before Darwin. In many ways they had anticipated the 

24 ME., I, 5, pp. 19-20. 25: ME., I, 5, pp. 15-16. 


N. N. Alexeiev 


101 


Darwinian conception of man, but they differed favorably 
in their sociology from the ordinary Darwinians of whom 
there were so many in the middle of the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury. In spite of their undeniable preference for the natu¬ 
ralistic theory of evolution, Marx and Engels never lost 
sight of the distinction between man and the animals. 26 
Man reproduces the whole of nature: that is what Marx 
means by “ universal.” “ Man masters nature; in his rela¬ 
tion to nature he is master, whereas the animal is simply 
a part of nature. Through human productivity man hu¬ 
manizes nature, and as a result, nature appears as his 
work.” 27 

From the foregoing it follows that the well known defini¬ 
tion of Aristotle, adopted almost universally by later Chris¬ 
tian literature, of man as an “ animal rationale,” is not en¬ 
tirely foreign to Marx; 28 he tried to improve this definition 
by making a very close connection between human reason 
and labor. Man is a rational being because he is able to 
create tools and instruments, and is able to devote himself 
to economic activity (whereas the animal does not pro¬ 
duce; it only accumulates). Marx employs Benjamin 
Franklin’s definition of man as a “ tool-making animal.” 29 
The creature which is able to make tools is essentially ra¬ 
tional. 30 Man is, therefore, not only a rational animal: he 
is a creature capable of production, technical achievement, 
and mastery over nature. And these two aspects of human 
existence (reason, and the capacity for using tools) are 
closely related to each other and mutually interdependent. 

In the history of philosophical anthropology and soci- 

26 me., i, 3, p. 187. 27 Ibid. 

28 For the relation between Aristotle and Marx’s theory see Erdmann, 
“Die philosophischen Voraussetzungen der materialistischen Geschichts- 
aufiassung,” in Schmollers Jahrbuch, 1907, p. 3. 

29 Kapital, I, pp. 350, 141 ff. 

so ibid., I, p. 140; Eng. trans. E. and C. Paul, I, 169, 170. 


102 The Christian Understanding of Man 

ology, Marx is not the only one who has recognized the 
significance of the technical factor in the development of 
man. Quite independently of him a movement arose which 
has investigated the function of the tool and has arrived at 
a similar definition of man to his own (cf. L. Geiger, Kapp, 
Norite, H. Bergson). The Marxist anthropology is a 
theory of the creative evolution of man which gives the 
necessary place to the theory of creative revolution. For 
Marxism, therefore, human history is simply “ the genera¬ 
tion of man through human labor.” Socialist man pos¬ 
sesses the “ obvious incontrovertible proof of his birth 
through his own effort, a proof which is found in the very 
process of his origin.” 31 

Thus Marxism has elaborated a conception of man 
which can with justice be defined as activist. The funda¬ 
mental principle underlying this conception is not the 
“ object,” but man’s own activity. 32 Marx insists that 
man’s “ active side ” has been hitherto represented not by 
materialism, but by idealism, which, however, is not aware 
of “ actual, concrete activity as such.” Feuerbach, who 
emphasized this “ active side ” in philosophy, thought of 
it only as a theoretical condition, not as a “ praktisch- 
menschlich-sinnliche, praktisch-kritische ” revolutionary 
activity. This practical quality is the criterion of the truth 
of human cognition. “ In practice man must demonstrate 
the truth, that is, the reality, power, and this-sidedness 
( Diesseitigkeit) of his thought.” Thoughts stated in this 
way gave some Marxists reason to compare Marxist phi¬ 
losophy with those types of philosophical doctrine which 
saw the highest philosophical principle not in objective re¬ 
ality, but in the activities of man as a biological individual 
(e.g., empiriocriticism, pragmatism, etc.). The well 

si ME., I, 3, p. 125. 

32 As in Marx’s famous thesis on Feuerbach, ME., I, 5, p. 533: 


N. N. Alexeiev 


103 

known physicist Ernst Mach, for example, regarded sci¬ 
ence as a by-product of human labor. 33 Human cognition 
was for him only an instrument capable of being of assist¬ 
ance in technical activity. Lenin’s famous philosophical 
opponent, A. Bogdanov, has expounded Marxism in this 
sense and was for this reason excommunicated by Lenin. 
“ Physical science,” Bogdanov says, “ is nothing but an ide¬ 
ology resulting from the productive energies of society.” 34 
This particular Marxist tendency which had supporters in 
the West 35 is nearer to the anthropology of early Marxism 
than to the later naturalistic cosmology of Engels and 
Lenin. 

(f) According to the Marxist theory man as a historical 
fact has no higher value, no absolute moral value. Marx¬ 
ism acknowledges human value only in so far as man's life 
is conditioned by the course of history. 

In addition to the metaphysical doctrine of man as a 
personality, there is what might be called the axiological 
problem of man: the problem of the moral value of actual 
human existence. This problem has never been stated by 
Marxism as an independent question for philosophical in¬ 
quiry. Nevertheless, Marxism does work with certain con¬ 
ceptions of value which it unconsciously recognizes and 
endows with historico-philosophical form. One often 
speaks of Marxist individualism, of the Marxist struggle 
for the rights of the “ under-dog ” and so forth. It is easy 
to adduce instances in the works of Marx and Engels of 
what are so clearly “ individualistic ” modes of thought 
that no impartial observer can deny them. In the interests 

33 E. Mach, Erkenntnis und Irrtum, 1905, and his Theory of Heat. 

34 Vide Bogdanov’s preface to the Russian translation of Mach’s Die 
Analyse der Empfindungen (Moscow, 1908). 

35 E.g., Fr. Adler, Mach’s Uberwindung des mechanischen Materia- 
lismus, (Vienna, 1918). Adler, whose Marxist sympathies are unquestion¬ 
able, is now secretary of the Second International. 


104 The Christian Understanding of Man 

of truth, however, it must be admitted that this Marxist 
“ individualism ” is to be clearly differentiated from that of 
liberal democracy. Marx established this difference in an 
article on the Jewish question, published in 1843, * n which 
he discovers that the “ democratic ” conception of man is 
false because it is too “ Christian.” This conception holds 

that not one man alone but each man has value as a sovereign 
being: man even as uncultured and unsocial, man in his casual 
manner of being, man as he walks and stands, as he is when 
spoilt by the whole mechanism of history, subordinated to the 
domination of inhuman relations and forces: in a word, man 
who is not yet a proper representative of a species ( Gattungs - 
weseri ).... For liberal democracy that illusion, dream and 
postulate of Christianity, namely, man as a sovereign soul, 
but entirely different from real man as he actually is, is a con¬ 
crete reality, an actuality, a practical maxim of this world. 36 

Historical man, therefore, is not the possessor of any 
absolute value as Christians and democrats believe. He 
is in no way of absolute significance in his own right, for 
whatever value he possesses is dependent on his historical 
function, and on the relation in which he stands to the 
process of historical development. He is the bearer of 
value only in so far as he is the expression of the positive 
forces of history. Otherwise he loses whatever positive 
value he has. For Marxism, therefore, man is a kind of 
“ sandwich-man ”: for as an individual personality he dis¬ 
appears between the sandwich-boards on which history has 
inscribed its legend and which he is destined to carry about 
with him. He has significance in so far as what is written 
on him is historically good (i.e., progressive). But it is not 
always good. Marx writes in his preface to the first edition 
of the first volume of Das Kapital: 

The persons of capitalists and landowners are not depicted 
in rose-tinted colors; but if I speak of individuals it is only in 
36 ME., I, 1, p. 590. 


N. N. Alexeiev 


105 

so far as they are the personifications of economic categories 
and representatives of special class relations and interests. Inas¬ 
much as I conceive the development of the economic structure 
of society to be a natural process, I should be the last to hold 
the individual responsible for conditions whose creature he 
himself is, socially considered, however he may raise himself 
above them subjectively. 37 

When Marx paints the proletarian in rosy colors and de¬ 
scribes his virtues, these qualities are not the expression of 
the inner life of the proletarian soul, but are, in like man¬ 
ner, only “ historical categories,” the “ personifications of 
special class relations.” 

In other words, Marxism does not believe in the validity 
of certain ideal values, or of personality. The ethic of 
value, of the categorical imperative, or of moral autonomy, 
as established by the Kantians, is not a Marxist ethic. The 
logical Marxist cannot assert with Kant that “ in the whole 
of creation whatever man wants, and whatever he is able to 
do are simply means to be used; man alone ... is an end 
in himself.” Marxism does not justify the ethic which 
holds that the end justifies the means; 38 it does, however, 
support the view that the process of history and the law of 
historical evolution do determine the value of man and 
therefore make of the individual man, in certain circum¬ 
stances, a means. The ethical teaching of Marxism is a 
consequence of the Hegelian philosophy which also found 
in the historical evolution of the idea of the absolute the 
basis of man’s ethical life, though Marx and Engels substi- 

37 Eng. trans., II, 864. 

38 But cf. Lenin: “ In our opinion morality is entirely subordinate to 
class war; everything is moral which is necessary for the annihilation of 
the old exploiting order and for the uniting of the proletariat and 
Preobazhenski: “ Whereas in a society in which there are no classes lying is 
a disadvantage in itself . . . the case is quite different in a society based 
on class. In the struggle of an exploited class against their enemies, lying 
and deceit are very important weapons/’ Quoted by R. Fiilop-Miiller, 
Lenin and Gandhi. — Translator. 


io6 The Christian Understanding of Man 

tute for this the idea of economic relations and class inter¬ 
ests. The belief that the process of historical evolution is 
“ good,” that “ it ” moves from necessity toward freedom, 
is also Hegelian, as Marx and Engels admit. They believed 
that each stage of history brings an improvement, and that 
the various social classes which appear successively in his¬ 
tory carry in themselves ethical values which justify their 
struggle for power and create of other classes only an in¬ 
strument for the achievement of the aims of human evolu¬ 
tion. From this standpoint any doctrine of the higher 
worth of man is simply an object of scorn and hardly de¬ 
serves consideration. 39 

(g) The birth in communistic society of the individual 
personality is made possible, according to Marxist teaching, 
by the complete identification in such society of the “ indi¬ 
vidual” with the “ general ” of human personality with 
society. Only such an identification can guarantee the re¬ 
construction of the “ total man ” and of the “ truly human 
individual.” 

The theory of the so-called totalitarian state is by no 
means a contemporary product. Totalitarian ideas are 
found quite definitely in some of the “ organic ” doctrines 
of the Restoration period. In the opinion of some repre¬ 
sentatives of this type of thought the totalitarian state is a 
universe in itself, in which all things are compressed into 
a whole, and where there is no contradiction between the 
particular and the general. “ The disturbing factor 
throughout is the egoism of the individual, who challenges 
the Whole.” 40 Such a state is no longer a state because the 
people living in it are not governed by anybody. But these 
advocates of the organic theory conceived the embodiment 
of their ideal as existing in the past or in the present, 

39 ME., I, 5, pp. 58-59. 

40 J. Wagner, System der Idealphilosophie (Leipzig, 1804), p. 115. 


N. N. Alexeiev 


107 

whereas the Marxists believe that it is to be found only in 
the future after the collapse of the old order. Only then 
will such a communistic society be possible, requiring 
neither state nor government; in it law, as a bourgeois 
system, will be superfluous; it is nonsense to believe, we 
are told in the Deutsch-franzdsische Jahrbixcher, that there 
will be any question of duties and rights in the communis¬ 
tic society — of two complementary aspects of an antithesis 
which belongs only to bourgeois society. 

Of course there will not be lacking in this society a cer¬ 
tain solidarity, but this must not be interpreted in its bour¬ 
geois sense. “ The awareness of individuals of their mu¬ 
tual relationship,” we read in the Deutsche Ideologic, 

“ will have as little to do with the ‘ love-principle ’ or ‘ de- 
vouement ’ as has egoism.” And the chief thing is that in 
such an ideal society there will be a complete identity be-^ 
tween the individual man and the community. In Marx’s 
view the contrast of the individual as an independent, self- 
consistent being with human society is only conceivable at 
certain periods of history. Such a contrast is the product 
of the “ inorganic ” condition of modern society, the prod¬ 
uct of that sense of incompletion and division which we 
have already mentioned. In fully developed societies this 
complete identification of self and species is indispensable. 

“ Not until man has recognized his own powers as social 
powers and organized them as such, and in this way has 
ceased to see any separation of social from political power, 
can human emancipation be accomplished.” 41 We are 
here face to face with an ideally formulated ideal of totali¬ 
tarian society. Society is here a totality, but the individual 
also achieves his totality, or as Marx says, he is at the same 
time a “ particular individual ” and the “ ideal totality,” 

41 Judenfrage, cited by Mehring, A us dem literarischen Nachlass, B. I., 
p. 424. 


108 The Christian Understanding of Man 

the subjective existence of a society which has been imag¬ 
ined and experienced. 42 

But this external resemblance of the ideals of totalitarian 
society and the totalitarian state does not in the least degree 
justify their identification with one another. The doc¬ 
trine of the totalitarian state confers upon the state abso¬ 
lute value; the state is the highest thing that exists, it is 
even divine; but the Marxist conception of the totalitarian 
society goes beyond the state: it demands the abolition of 
the state when the condition of communism is reached, 
preaching the death of all the power and force exercised 
by the state, and promising complete freedom. It is here 
that the chief paradox of the Marxist teaching about the 
totalitarian society is revealed. It is believed by many that 
the ultimate condition of the communist society will there¬ 
fore be one of anarchy; but in so doing they tend to forget 
that the fathers as well as the disciples of Marxism (includ¬ 
ing Lenin) fought against anarchism and anarchistic tend¬ 
encies. The Marxist theory sees in the totalitarian society 
of the future a stateless but nevertheless organized condi¬ 
tion, not one of anarchistic chaos. 

It is, however, questionable whether the absolute libera¬ 
tion of man from the state as a resultant socially organized 
condition is even thinkable. In our opinion there are two 
solutions to the problem: either the superstate community 
is a kind of animal society, like an anthill or a beehive — 
or it is a form of secular church. Neither of these is a state, 
yet they are both organized. We cannot suggest any third 
possibility. 43 

42 “ Das subjektive Dasein der gedachten und empfundenen Gesellschaft 
fur sich ” (ME., I, 3, 117); that is, a microcosm of society. 

43 The first possibility is presented by Bogdanov ( Der Stiirz des Feti- 
schismus, 1910, Russian) and Lenin (Staat und Revolution, 1917); the 
second by J. Dietzgen (Die Religion und, Sozialdemokratie, 1870-75, Berlin, 
1900). 


N. N. Alexeiev 


109 

B. The Christian Conception of Man and the Anthro¬ 
pology of Marxism. 

It is scarcely possible to speak of a uniform Christian 
anthropology from the historical standpoint, for the history 
of Christian thought reveals as many kinds of theories 
about man as there are Christian philosophies. The task 
which we have set ourselves does not consist in the estab¬ 
lishment of a doctrine of man corresponding to any particu¬ 
lar confessional or philosophical school. We shall merely 
enumerate some of the general tendencies of the Christian 
conception of man as they are found in the sources of the 
Christian faith, and, in a general sense, accepted by all 
Christians. Our task is to compare and contrast this gen¬ 
eral Christian idea of man with the Marxist conception 
which has been described above. In drawing possible anal¬ 
ogies between Marxism and this Christian idea we must be 
careful not to regard either of them as purely static. Fur¬ 
ther, what is under consideration is not the comparison of 
two complete and fully crystallized systems, but far more 
the approximation of two living movements which illu¬ 
minate each other and can lead to a recovery of a true un¬ 
derstanding of human nature. There is always something 
artificial about analogies if they are purely external; for an 
analogy is only profitable if it throws light on the imma¬ 
nent perception of the qualities of things, not when it is 
merely the play of human thought, which can compare any¬ 
thing you like with anything else. 

(a) The Marxist Anthropological exposition of nature is 
not opposed to the spirit of Christianity if we omit the idea 
of creation; this , however , constitutes a limit beyond which 
the analogy cannot proceed. 

Man’s relation to nature, and the cosmological problem 
in general, form a very vulnerable place in the Christian 
philosophy as it is set forth in revelation and in the original 


no The Christian Understanding of Man 

sources: in the Old and New Testaments. The New Testa¬ 
ment has not formulated any cosmological problem: the 
book of Genesis, however, regards man as the crown of 
creation. In this view, it is difficult to say whether man is 
a product of nature or whether nature was only created for 
his benefit. In all the other passages in the Old Testament 
nature is referred to only in so far as it fulfills some func¬ 
tion in the relation of man to God: thus it is with the help 
of nature that God, by means of various physical phenom¬ 
ena, demonstrates to man his power, his will and his plans. 
For the prophetic consciousness nature was never autono¬ 
mous, with its own inner life, expressing its own laws and 
possessing (though of course unconsciously) a soul of its 
own. Nature was no more than a divine alphabet, a collec¬ 
tion of objects created by God. The prophetic conscious¬ 
ness had none of that feeling for nature which the Greeks 
possessed to a superlative degree. In this sense we are justi¬ 
fied in saying that both the Old and the New Testaments 
are definitely anthropological rather than cosmological in 
character. 

Even in later Christian thought, as during the Middle 
Ages after the adoption of the Aristotelian philosophy, cos¬ 
mological questions did not come to the fore. At the center 
of medieval thought there were always theological prob¬ 
lems which were inseparable from the Christian elucida¬ 
tion of human problems. The so-called medieval Weltan¬ 
schauung , even if, generally speaking, it was more alive than 
the Hebrew spirit to the recognition of nature, still re¬ 
garded natdre simply as a means of finding the way to 
God . 44 An autonomous and intuitive appreciation of na¬ 
ture, apart from any connection with theology, was scarcely 
known in the Middle Ages and failed to give any inspira¬ 
tion to the soul of medieval man. There is, moreover, no 

44 See Bonaventura, Itinerarium mentis in Deum , Prologus, 9. 


N. N. Alexeiev 


m 


doubt at all that the awakening of the intuitive perception 
of nature at the time of the Renaissance was not due to 
Christianity, but to the influence of Greek philosophy. 
Thus, the later European physical science and the natural¬ 
istic outlook may be said to have sprung not from Christian 
principles, but from those of ancient philosophy. 

From all that has just been said we may well believe it 
is in this sphere of anthropological and cosmological prob¬ 
lems that we may light on some traces of those hidden 
threads which connect the Marxist Weltanschauung with 
the Hebrew prophetic spirit and hence with the Christian 
spirit. The Marxist leaning toward the anthropological 
approach to nature, toward the view that in any view of 
nature all “ fine talk ” about “ Substance ” should be 
banned, the assertion that nature only exists for the sake of 
man, and that nature only molds man’s external body: all 
these are ideas which have a greater affinity with Christian 
doctrine than with the ancient cosmology and the more 
modern scientific view of nature which is derived from it. 
In the modern era, from external necessity, Christianity has 
been compelled to-accommodate itself to the scientific view 
of the world; though it is doubtful if this accommodation 
has been successful, indeed, we may well ask whether, even 
at the present day, there is not an irreconcilable antithesis 
between the scientific and the Christian views of the world. 
Under these conditions it is quite possible that the anthro¬ 
pological conception of nature held by the Marxists might 
be so interpreted as to be not inconsistent with Christian 
doctrine. We mention this problem without settling it, 
believing that in view of the present uncertainty which sur¬ 
rounds cosmological questions in Christian philosophy it 
would be good to examine the whole question seriously. 
At this juncture, however, we can say with confidence that 
the Marxist anthropological approach to nature in no way 


112 The Christian Understanding of Man 

contradicts the«Christian view. At this point, however, we 
are confronted* by a difficulty which we must always bear 
in mind. 

Christian anthropology always takes the idea of divine 
creation for granted, whereas Marxism obviously rejects 
it. In Marx’s Oekonomisch-philosophischen Manuskrip- 
ten we find some very interesting observations on what 
is called “ creationism,” in which his opposition to the 
Christian doctrine is expressed very clearly. Marx pro¬ 
ceeds from the view that the creation contradicts the self- 
glorification of socialist man. A created being is depend¬ 
ent, for it exists “ by the grace of another,” namely, the 
Creator. Thus, from the standpoint of independence only 
the theory of the self-generation of man is acceptable. 
Marx, of course, did not believe that primitive man con¬ 
sciously created himself; he only believed that matter and 
life contain immanent creative forces which are expressed 
in various forms in world history. Marxism, therefore, as 
we have already said, must be understood in the sense of 
Bergson’s “ creative evolution.” For this reason Marx re¬ 
gards the generatio aequivoca as the only possible hypothe¬ 
sis on which to base an explanation of the origin of life. 

The foregoing ideas are essential, because they bring 
out very clearly the contrast between them and the so- 
called “ Christian awareness.” 45 The self-creating man of 
Marxism is actually a Titan, “ who confronts the gods and 
only in himself recognizes the all-highest.” We have here 
an excellent example of this onesided Schopfergefiihl and 
Hochgefiihl (Otto) of the man who glorifies himself. The 
Christian conception of creation (and that held generally 
speaking by all religions) does not repudiate the assertion 

45 We use here Otto’s terminology, which in this connection distin¬ 
guishes very clearly between Christianity and Marxism. Cf. Westostliche 
Mystik (second ed., 1929), p. 135, passim. 


N. N. Alexeiev 


J1 3 

that man “ as creative feels himself to be one with the Cre¬ 
ator from all eternity but at the same time it calls atten¬ 
tion to the other pole of human nature: the moment at 
which man is aware of the futility of created existence, its 
vanity and emptiness; when he feels that he is a “ miserable 
creature.” It is in the creation hypothesis that the specifi¬ 
cally religious awareness of man’s dependence is found; 
this sense of dependence is completely absent from Marx¬ 
ism, and gives it its fundamentally antireligious character. 

A few words remain to be said about the later cosmo¬ 
logical motives in Marxism as considered from the Chris¬ 
tian standpoint. The elevation of material nature to a 
position of absolute significance, which we find in the later 
stages of Marxism, is completely opposed to the spirit of 
Christian philosophy and makes any comparison between 
Christianity and Marxism impossible. If man is only a 
product of physical nature, only an insignificant part of the 
infinite material substance, then it is questionable whether 
a small piece of matter will ever be able to conquer the 
material world. The lord of nature must in some sense 
stand over and above nature, and must not be regarded as 
an inseparable part of the infinite whole of the physical 
world. 

We believe that in that which concerns the idea of dia¬ 
lectic, the special emphasis on the principle of identity (as, 
for instance, in Thomism) does not constitute an indis¬ 
pensable element of Christian philosophy. Christian phi¬ 
losophy, particularly in regard to the problem of man, is 
bound to be dialectic, and should keep before it constantly 
the antinomian and paradoxical character of human na¬ 
ture. In this sense the dialectic idea is quite Christian. 
Yet, from the standpoint of a Christian dialectic it would 
appear that the Marxist view of human nature is not suffi¬ 
ciently dialectical. Marxism concentrates one-sidedly on 


ii 4 The Christian Understanding of Man 

one aspect of human nature only — the material, physical, 
economic — and ignores the other — the spiritual, meta¬ 
physical, ideal. It also exaggerates the titanic, self-glori¬ 
fying side, and forgets the other; the fact that man has been 
created. Marxism does not seem to be aware of these antin¬ 
omies, and makes no attempt to develop them in a delib¬ 
erate and philosophical manner. Marxism ceases to use 
the dialectical method precisely where it needs it most. 

(b) The Marxist view of man as a social being agrees in 
many respects with the spirit of Christianity. This agree¬ 
ment, however, is limited by the negative attitude of Marx¬ 
ism toward the Christian principle of love. 

The comparison between the Marxist and Christian con¬ 
ceptions of man, within the framework of the problems 
which have been mentioned, compels us to ask the follow¬ 
ing question which is of immense importance for the Chris¬ 
tian concept of man: Is man, according to this concept, 
to be conceived as an abstract, isolated individual, or is 
he for Christian doctrine also a social being which cannot 
be imagined as existing apart from relations to other men? 
The history of Christian philosophy supplies an unambigu¬ 
ous answer to this question: the doctrine of the social na¬ 
ture of man was from the beginning a recognized Christian 
doctrine even though the Christians took it over from 
Aristotle. The only question is how far this doctrine is 
compatible with the so-called “ Christian individualism.” 
For of late, according to an American thinker, there has 
been a very widespread idea that Christianity pursues in¬ 
dividualistic rather than social ends . 46 

This point of view is supported with similar force by 
a well known German scholar, who says that Christianity 
“ is an unlimited, unqualified individualism. The stand¬ 
ee Reinhold Niebuhr, “ Christian Politics and Communist Religion,” 
in Christianity and the Social Revolution (Gollancz, 1935). 


N. N. Alexeiev 


X1 5 

ard of this individualism ... is determined simply by its 
own sense of that which will further its consecration to 
God.” 47 Only as a second, derivative element does the 
nature of man appear as social. The individual as a form 
of absolute value only attains his fulfilment “ through self- 
abnegation in unconditional obedience to the Holy Will 
of God.” In this originates the idea of “ the absolute life- 
community of those united together in God,” which also 
forms an indispensable element in the Christian concept of 
man. In Christianity, according to Troeltsch, “ absolute 
individualism ” is transformed into “ absolute universal- 
ism.” These two poles require each other and are com¬ 
plementary . 48 We believe, however, that Troeltsch sepa¬ 
rates too widely these two poles. In practice, the Christian 
does achieve this “ universality,” that is, complete unity of 
the individual with the universal, of course, only through 
his unio mystica with God; though once he has reached this 
stage, universal, and therefore social, existence becomes 
a thing of equal, if not greater, importance (i.e., than 
individual existence). On this level perhaps the whole 
position should be reversed, and the starting-point should 
not be the individual but the divine society. Christianity 
postulates such a mutual interpenetration of the individ¬ 
ualistic and the universal elements that priority has to be 
given not to the individual but to the social whole: the 
individual personality is thus regarded as issuing from 
the human community. 

We can pursue the analogy between Marxism and Chris¬ 
tianity concerning the social nature of man even further. 
Neither Christianity nor Marxism regards as static the ex¬ 
isting modes of social life. The Christian does not seek 
in them the ideal expression of the unity of the individual 

47 Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, Eng. 
trans., p. 55. 48 Ibid., p. 41. 


116 The Christian Understanding of Man 

man with society; this is for him only to be found in the 
Kingdom of God, which is “ not of this world,” but is only 
possible after the transfiguration of this world and the 
resurrection of the dead. In this sense the attempt to 
identify the Kingdom of God with any particular social 
program (as, for example, with social democracy) is folly. 
Even the best possible social program can only create a 
god-fearing life on earth: it cannot create the Kingdom 
of God. 

In some ways anti-Christian Marxist thought is nearer 
to the social-political ideal of Christianity than these “ or¬ 
ganic ” political philosophies which have already been 
mentioned. This statement follows from the fact that the 
Marxist doctrine of the antinomian character of existing 
social forms, and in particular the antagonistic nature of 
the state as an organization of class forces, is in full accord 
with the spirit of such Christian political views as we find 
in the Old Testament and in the Book of Revelation. The 
affinity between Marxism and the Hebrew prophetic spirit 
cannot be questioned. It is, of course, not a matter of 
close agreement about the details of the class-war theory, 
but only the general conception of the state as an institu¬ 
tion which originates in brute force alone, an institution, 
moreover, which is in harmony with the decay of society, 
and is bound to disappear in the perfect community of the 
future. The Chosen People, according to the Old Testa¬ 
ment, lived originally in a stateless condition, as the free 
community of the children of Yahweh, who alone was their 
legitimate king. The Hebrew ideal was that of an earthly 
theocracy, to which the idea of the power of the state was 
strange, and which was governed by the prophets, the medi¬ 
ators of the divine will. The state, in the biblical concep¬ 
tion, began with the period of degeneration, as a product 


N. N. Alexeiev 


ii7 

of murder, crime and sin. The first king was Abimelech, 
whose authority the Bible compares to a bramble which 
alone was willing to accept the crown, whereas all the other 
noble and useful trees refused it. 49 The anointing of Saul 
is regarded as a transgression of the law. In the words of 
Samuel a state with a king at its head is a refuge for every¬ 
thing evil. 

This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over 
you: he will take your sons and appoint them unto him, for his 
chariots and to be his horsemen; and they shall run before his 
chariots . . . and he will take your daughters to be confection¬ 
aries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take your 
fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best 
of them, and give them to his servants. 50 

Kingship is, therefore, an institution for exploitation: in 
the Bible as well as in Marxism. 

The idea of the class struggle in the Marxist sense can¬ 
not, however, be found in Christian doctrine. But the 
mystical conception of the external and internal history of 
nations as a bitter struggle appears in the symbols of the 
Book of Revelation. Nowhere is the catastrophic character 
of man’s history so clearly described as in this Christian 
book. The social implication of chapters 17 and 18 is 
worth special attention. In these chapters the noteworthy 
thing, as a recent Russian commentator on the Apocalypse 
has observed, is the symbolic description of the most pow¬ 
erful of all known systems, namely, capitalism: “ the great 
harlot that sitteth on many waters.” 51 “ The following 

words of the Apocalypse,” says this writer, “ point directly 
to this: ‘ The great city which rules over all the kings of the 

49 judg. 9:7 ff. 

60 1 Sam. 8:11-14. 

si Rev. 17:1. Cf. N. Setnitzky, The Ultimate Ideal, (Harbin, 1932). 


n 8 The Christian Understanding of Man 

earth ’ ” (17:18). The symbols, with the aid of which this 
social system and its decline are characterized, result in the 
following historical picture: we see first of all this system 
on the pinnacle of power, self-satisfied and infinitely proud 
in its complacence. (“ I sit a queen, and am no widow, 
and shall in no wise see mourning,” 18:7.) Thereupon 
follows the sudden catastrophe, and the system is destroyed 
by the very beast which has supported it. In the very 
depths of the system are the forces which are evoked to 
destroy it. These are the dark forces of chaos, the “ an¬ 
archy of production,” of which Marx has spoken. 52 

We must now try to answer the following question: Is 
Christianity committed to the “ antagonistic ” theory of 
society as expounded by Marx, with all its consequences: 
of class struggle, social revolution, and the practice of mili¬ 
tant communism? The endeavor to answer this question 
leads to the following conclusions. 

From the standpoint of things as they are (but not from 
the ideal standpoint) there is no reason why the Christian 
should minimize the element of social antagonism in mod¬ 
ern society. Every lasting and properly organized social 
unity presupposes a certain degree of solidarity (or loy¬ 
alty) among the individuals or groups who constitute it. 
Without such solidarity the community is transformed 
into a state of inner conflict, or assumes the appearance 
of a purely mechanically imposed unity which by means of 
might alone is able to force upon people some kind of 
collective consciousness. But this recognition of solidarity 
as a formal principle and as a general category of social 
life has nothing to do with the various political and eco¬ 
nomic theories of so-called “ solidarity ” which minimize 
the part played in history by the inner contradictions ex¬ 
isting in the social order, and have been justifiably attacked 
5,2 Loc. cit., 185, 191. 


N. N. Alexeiev 


119 

by the socialists. The principle of solidarity assumes 
greater importance only when we pass from existing social 
conditions to social ideals. Christians and Marxists agree 
that the ideally conceived classless society can only be built 
upon the basis of social solidarity. 

From the standpoint of what ought to be the Christian 
cannot allow himself to take part in the class struggle or 
in social revolution like the Marxists. In this respect any 
attempt to discover a closer approximation between Marx¬ 
ism and Christianity is doomed to failure from the outset. 
The ethical aspect (though not the economic practice) of 
the theory of the class struggle and social revolution is fre¬ 
quently supported by appealing to the Old Testament. 
Here the valid norm consists in the familiar saying, “ an 
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” 53 

(c) There is contact between Christianity and Marxism 
in the idea of man as a psycho-physical being . This con¬ 
tact , however, ceases with the statement of the Christian 
doctrine of man as the “ image of God.” 

It is undeniable that both Marxism and Christianity 
belong to those types of doctrine which do not begin with 
the metaphysical-idealistic hypothesis of the absolute au¬ 
tonomy of man ( der Mensch an sick) , of the ego on a level 
with God. There is certainly a resemblance between the 
two systems in the rejection of such a purely idealistic 
anthropology. The analogy becomes still clearer when we 
pass to the question of the dual character of man as at 
once spiritual and physical. A certain “ materialism ” is 
not entirely foreign to the Christian conception of man, 
particularly when we consider the most important of the 
original sources of this conception. The idea of man as a 
purely spiritual, ideal being is actually a later product of 
Christian philosophy; for the Old Testament conceives 
)63 Cf. Esther 9:5, 15. 


120 The Christian Understanding of Man 

man as a being composed of body and soul. 54 In the New 
Testament doctrine of the resurrection the body is con¬ 
cerned as well as the soul. 

The Pauline Epistles, too, show traces of the “ material¬ 
ist ” tradition of Stoicism, in which the body is an integral 
and inseparable element of human nature. The familiar 
Pauline doctrine of the different kinds of body 55 leads to 
the conclusion that the present human body can be trans¬ 
formed into another material form. Many other early 
Christian theologians (e.g., Tatian, Athenagoras, Irenaeus, 
Tertullian) had theories about the interrelation of body 
and soul in personality and even arrived at a kind of “ mys¬ 
tical materialism.” This tradition has never died out in 
subsequent Byzantine theology. All this goes to support 
the statement that the Christian is justified in accepting 
the Marxist teaching about the close connection between 
consciousness and material existence, at any rate in so far 
as it is concerned with human nature. 

It is also quite possible to approach the interaction of 
human nature and human history, materialistically and 
economically conceived, in a general Marxist sense, with¬ 
out ceasing to be a Christian, and without being in the 
least obliged to accept its one-sided mechanistic interpre¬ 
tations of economic materialism, in which material ex¬ 
istence is given a primary place, and consciousness is re¬ 
garded as no more than a “ reflex and echo ” of material 
conditions. 56 Fortunately, however, Russian Marxist the¬ 
ory of the post-Lenin period has recognized the independ¬ 
ent nature of consciousness, as well as the positive character 
of human personality, and in this way has substantially 
modified the one-sidedness of the materialistic view of the 
relation between nature and consciousness. 


64 Cf. Fr. Riische, Blut, Leben und Seele, 1930. 

65 1 Corinthians 15:39 ff. 56 See above. 


N. N. Alexeiev 


121 


For the satisfactory elucidation of this problem it might 
be necessary to ask whether the theory of the dependence 
of consciousness on the physical world is valid only for an 
imperfect society, and, therefore, that when the stage of 
“ positive humanism ” has been attained — that is, after 
the final liberation of man from the power of nature and 
from slavery to economic conditions has been achieved — 
it will disappear, or whether it is valid in all circumstances 
and for all time. Hitherto, Marxist theory has not offered 
any answer to this question; but, if the first theory is right, 
and if the dependence of consciousness on nature is only 
relative, it should be possible for Christians and Marxists 
to reach complete agreement on this particular point. 

It now remains to be seen how Christianity stands in 
relation to the Marxist attempt to differentiate between 
man and animal. Hitherto, Christianity has offered no 
unambiguous answer to the problem of this relation 
though innumerable theories have been suggested, which 
are often mutually contradictory. One thing, however, 
must be noted: the Marxist idea of man’s creativity as a 
thing of positive value and a peculiarity of human life is 
Christian in its origin: for no other religion has rated so 
highly the significance of work, the creative powers of man, 
and his capacities for organization. 57 This is clearly ex¬ 
pressed in the familiar words of the Apostle Paul, in which 
he insists that man’s right to eat depends upon the fact 
that he works, a declaration which is now embodied in the 
official text of the new Soviet constitution. We know that 
the interpretation of these words in Christian theology and 
philosophy has varied at different times, but their meaning 
remains, generally speaking, the same. Work, that is, 
man’s creative activity, is of value for its own sake, no mat- 

57 See Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Religionssoziologie, 1920, 
and H. Bergson, Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion, Paris, 1932. 


122 The Christian Understanding of Man 

ter whether it is of absolute or of relative importance, 
whether it originates in love toward God or toward man, 
or whether it is the result of the injunction to live the 
ascetic life. 

In this sense the Marxist conception of the creative man 
is in agreement with certain tendencies in Christian civ¬ 
ilization, out of which have come the activism of the West 
and the whole of modern industrial and technical society. 
The fact that the value of man’s creative and organizing 
activity is appreciated not only by the various Protestant 
sects but also by the more mystically minded Christianity 
of the East is clearly seen in those ideas in Byzantine the¬ 
ology, which found in this capacity for creation and or¬ 
ganizing the distinctive feature of human life, which raises 
man above all other creatures, even above the angels. 68 

(d) The real, perfect man, according to Christian doc¬ 
trine, is revealed only in the person of Jesus Christ, Son of 
Man and Son of God, who is one element ( hypostasis) in 
the Trinity. One can therefore only speak of the perfect 
man, from the Christian standpoint, in the sense of his re¬ 
lationship to the Son of God, that is, communion with him 
and with the Holy Trinity. 

Christianity, considered in its philosophical and meta¬ 
physical aspect, does not belong to those doctrines which 
see in the Absolute an indivisible unity, but rather to those 
which attribute inner “ social ” relations to the Absolute 
and do not seek to detach the idea of God from that of 
community, for the Trinity itself is an example of a rela¬ 
tion between “ persons ” and is the most complete of all 
forms of “ community.” Christian metaphysics are in this 
way definitely sociological in character, which becomes 
clearer when we consider that according to the Christian 
conception the “ real ” man, as he is capable of being, will 
68 See G. Palamae, Capita physica, Migne, S.G.T. 155, Col. 1166. 


N. N. Alexeiev 


123 

be revealed only in the Kingdom of God. Philosophically 
expressed, such a condition will only be realized after the 
fundamental transformation of physical nature. This 
radical revolution having been achieved, however, man 
will not have the status of an individual pure and simple, 
with no relations to other men, but as a part of the whole, 
of the heavenly church, which through its mystical relation¬ 
ship to the Son of God cannot be conceived apart from the 
Trinity. It is this which distinguishes the Christian idea 
of man from those purely individualistic philosophies 
which regard man “ as such ” as nothing but an individual 
being, as, for example, in some tendencies of Indian 
thought, according to which the soul after its redemption 
is in complete isolation, and for such a soul not only the 
world, but even the idea of “ community ” is doomed to 
disappear. 59 But, on the other hand, this Christian notion 
of transcendental social relations does not imply that the 
individual is lost in the whole; on the contrary it demands 
the forceful expression of his individuality. As Royce has 
with justice observed, it is in this that the difference con¬ 
sists between the Christian and the Buddhist ideas of re¬ 
demption, for according to the latter man ceases, in the 
state of nirvana, to be an individual. 60 

Thus it is possible to perceive certain analogies between 
the social character of the Marxist notion of man and the 
social implications of Christian metaphysics. For Marx¬ 
ism, as for Christianity, the conception of man as a social 
being cannot be excluded from an analysis of human na¬ 
ture. For both the fulfilment of the nature of the indi¬ 
vidual man and the fulfilment of the nature of society are 
inconceivable apart from one another. The Christian doc¬ 
trine of the final cataclysm and of the future transfiguration 

59 Cf. R. Garbe, Die Samkhja Philosophic, 1894, p. 326. 

so Royce, The Problem of Christianity, i, p. 190. 


124 The Christian Understanding of Man 

and the resurrection of the dead suggest some similarity to 
the Marxist theory of the final collapse of society. In each 
case the existence of the new-born “ real ” man is bound up 
with the rest of mankind. It would seem that only one fur¬ 
ther step might be necessary in order to conceive of the 
ultimate Marxist ideal of social life as a church ideal, which 
we have already discussed. 

These observations certainly throw light upon enormous 
differences between the Christian philosophy, founded as 
it is on faith and revelation, and Marxism, which claims 
to be scientific, realistic, positivist, and is hostile to all 
forms of mysticism. And this difference is so great that it 
compels us to reverse the methods which we have hitherto 
adopted and to consider Christianity and Marxism not in 
the light of their points of contact, but of the great differ¬ 
ences which separate their conceptions of human nature 
from each other. 

3. THE CHRISTIAN AND MARXIST CONCEPTIONS OF HUMAN 
NATURE CONSIDERED IN THE LIGHT OF THEIR 
DIFFERENCES 

(a) The deepest cleavage between the two consists in 
this: that whereas Christianity is a religion based on faith 
and revelation, Marxism is a social system philosophically 
and scientifically founded on human reason. 

This difference should not be ignored — although this 
happens far too often — especially in the face of the asser¬ 
tion that there is no real antithesis between revelation and 
reason, and that revelation must be justified at the bar of 
reason. Whoever is of this opinion forgets that historically 
the Marxist system arose from the radical disagreement 
between Christianity and rationalism. What Engels could 
not accept about revelation was the idea that God is “ non- 
rational ” (we would say supra-rational), in other words. 


N. N. Alexeiev 


125 

that reason was not supreme. Possibly it is at this point 
that we see the deepest difference between Marxism and 
Christianity. If everything were ordered according to the 
laws of reason, Engels concluded, the “ divine personality ” 
would become superfluous, for the human consciousness 
would be raised to the level of the divine. 61 Those who 
consider that a peaceful return of Marxism to Christianity 
is possible, and, conversely, that a painless approach, un¬ 
accompanied by any inner struggle, of Christianity to 
Marxism is also possible, forget the spiritual crisis which 
drove Christian philosophy from the Reformation to He¬ 
gel, and from Hegel to Feuerbach, Stirner, Marx and 
Engels. 

Marxism is often described as a kind of religion, which 
ultimately has its basis in faith and has a God of its own. 
Marxism is the belief in the earthly millennium, 62 with the 
perfect human society or the collective godlike man in the 
place of God. 63 Seen from this angle, Marxism is a sort of 
deification of collective man and of a religion of humanity. 
In all this there is, of course, some modicum of truth, but 
it must be remembered at the same time that any attempt 
at a purely religious interpretation of Marxist doctrine is 
destined to fail because it tends to ignore the most impor¬ 
tant element in the Marxist philosophy and view of human 
nature, namely, their thoroughgoing atheism. The es¬ 
sence of Marxism consists in the fact that, in spite of the 
points of contact with Christianity which have already been 
described, it is farthest removed from a specifically reli¬ 
gious attitude to man just because it goes farthest in its en¬ 
deavors to confer absolute autonomy ( Verabsolutierung ) 

6i me., 1, 2, p. 224. 

6,2 See Gerlach, Der Kommunismus als Lehre vom tausendjdhrigen 
Reich, (Munich, 1920), and recently H. Marr, Die Massenwelt im Kampf 
um ihre Form (Hamburg, 1934). 

63 Cf. Niebuhr, in Christianity and the Social Revolution, p. 461. 


126 The Christian Understanding of Man 

on the individual. This becomes clear as soon as a com¬ 
parison is made between Marxism and other types of hu¬ 
manistic religion and philosophies which aim at making 
man into an absolute. 

One thing, however, is certain: the idea of a religion of 
humanity as conceived by Comte and his contemporaries 
is completely foreign to Marxism; for the simple reason 
that Marx was extremely negative in his judgments on re¬ 
ligion, and was not very particular about the way in which 
he expressed them. We have already seen that, historically 
considered, for Marxism religion is simply the result of the 
division of labor, namely, a product of the sense of incom¬ 
pletion or “ estrangement ” (. Entfremdung ). Religion 
springs out of the animal consciousness, the result of a one¬ 
sided sense of dependence on nature and society. Religion, 
therefore, is bound to disappear when the society of the 
future comes into being: atheism is one of the indispensa¬ 
ble conditions of such a “ positive humanism.” From this 
point of view it is futile to speak of a renaissance of religion 
in socialist society, or of the rise of a new religion. Engels 
has expressed this very clearly and well in his essays on 
Carlyle. “ We do not need,” says Engels, “ to impress upon 
what is truly human the stamp of the divine in order to be 
certain of its greatness and splendor. On the contrary, the 
more divine, that is, non-human, something is, the less shall 
we be able to admire it.” 64 And if the leaders of Marxism, 
like Carlyle and other social reformers, wish to fight against 
the “ indecision, the inner emptiness, the spiritual death, 
the dishonesty of our times,” they will not do so by re¬ 
ligious means. In the place of religion Marxism would set 
philosophy, as Marx in his younger days suggested in his 
articles in the Rheinische Zeitung (1842). Later, Marx 
chose to abandon philosophy and to regard science as a 
64 me., 1, 5, p. 427. 


N. N. Alexeiev 


127 

substitute for religion. In Sankt Max (1846) we read that 
“ philosophy must be left on one side; as an ordinary man 
one has to cut oneself loose from it and devote oneself to 
the study of reality.” 65 

In consequence of their antireligious position Marx and 
Engels repudiate all forms of “ religious socialism.” 66 
Such a position makes it impossible to discover any avenue 
of approach between Marxism and the religion of human¬ 
ity or religious socialism. The chief feature of such a “ re¬ 
ligion,” the conscious acknowledgment of the element of 
faith, is utterly lacking in Marxism. The Marxist glorifi¬ 
cation of collective man can be made to fit into the frame¬ 
work of pure knowledge alone: in this sense it must be 
regarded as a kind of science, denying even the ethical sub¬ 
stance of socialism, namely, the conception of the social 
ideal. Instead of value-judgments there is the theory of 
the historical process. For the genuine Marxist a formula 
such as “ The perfect society is the highest of all values ” 
would be entirely unacceptable, for he would say that it 
does not “ sound ” Marxist. We read in the Deutsche 
Ideologie: 

Communism is for us not a condition to have before us, 
an ideal with which reality will have to conform. We call 
communism itself the ultimate movement which puts an end 
to the present state. The conditions of this movement are the 
result of preconditions existing at the present time. 67 

These features of Marxist doctrine constitute an un¬ 
bridgeable gulf between Marxism and the Christian re¬ 
ligion. It is quite impossible to build a bridge between a 
religious system based on faith and revelation, like Chris¬ 
es ME., 1, 5, p. 216. 

ee Cf. Manifest gegen Kriege (1846); the article in the Brusseler 
deutsche Zeitung (1847); Engels’ Briefe aus London (ME., I, 2, pp. 370 ff.). 

67 ME., I, 5, p. 25. 


128 The Christian Understanding of Man 

tianity, and a doctrine, like Marxism, which is essen¬ 
tially atheistic and repudiates all forms of religious faith. 
Whether for a Christian or a Marxist the transition from 
Marxism to Christianity, and vice versa, would mean a real 
spiritual revolution. Without an inner upheaval the 
Christian cannot become a Marxist nor the Marxist a 
Christian. 

It may, however, be argued that hitherto we have only 
been dealing with the purely theoretical aims of Marxism, 
whereas we ought also to take into consideration what 
Marxism actually is. Actually, it is argued, it contains, 
though perhaps unconsciously, certain elements of belief, 
that is to say, of religion. This is particularly true when 
we think not of Marxist theory but of so-called popular 
Marxism. The masses, it is said, can only be moved by 
some kind of faith, and this faith in the coming of the mil¬ 
lennium on earth, the New Jerusalem, was and is, as a mat¬ 
ter of fact, the motive force of the Marxist masses. All this, 
however, requires qualification. For Marxism mobilizes 
the masses, in the first place, not by appealing to their faith 
in, or their desire for, a New Jerusalem, but by appealing 
directly to their class interests. It suggests to the masses 
that the socialist movement is their own affair, appealing 
to their own self-interest. In this there is a remarkable 
difference between Marxism and other socialist doctrines 
which are concerned with “ ideas ” and “ ideals,” rather 
than with purely material interests. We tend to forget 
that a great mass movement founded on class interests is 
easily capable of activity without any religious impulse 
at all. 

Further, there is a second consideration: whenever popu¬ 
lar Marxism seems to show evidence of some element of 
“ faith,” it is a unique phenomenon, the explanation of 
which is made more difficult rather than easier by com- 


N. N. Alexeiev 


129 

parison with religious faith. The most important thing 
about the so-called “ faith ” of Marxism is not the absence 
of belief in a personal or impersonal God, for Buddhism 
does not acknowledge a god, although it can with truth 
be called a religion. Buddhism does embody the specifi¬ 
cally religious type of feelings (or what Professor F. Stepun 
has so aptly called Glaublichkeit) which is completely ab¬ 
sent from Marxism: that is, the feeling of dependence (cf. 
Schleiermacher), the mysterium tremendum (Otto), rev¬ 
erence for that which is higher than man. The Hochgefuhl 
(Otto) of the Marxist mass-man who fights for his interests 
does not bear any trace of the characteristics of that emo¬ 
tion in its religious form. This proletarian elation grows 
out of the awareness of belonging to a certain class and is 
often only a polarization of bourgeois pride. 

This does not imply, however, that in the so-called re¬ 
ligious fervor of the Marxist masses (particularly in Rus¬ 
sia) , there are no quasi-religious elements ( Religidsitat) 
especially if by this term we mean the “ concentration of all 
spiritual forces in some all-embracing experience, the com¬ 
prehension of such experience in terms of symbol and idea, 
utter devotion and fanaticism.” 68 This “ religiosity ” is, 
nevertheless, bound up with the most radical denial of the 
Christian faith, and is one of the most characteristic fea¬ 
tures of our time. The presence of such a specific kind of 
religiosity (or quasi-religiosity) is not sufficient to warrant 
our drawing analogies between Marxism and the Christian 
religion. 

(b) The second fundamental difference between Chris¬ 
tianity and Marxism is expressed in the transcendental 
basis of the Christian conception of man contrasted with 
the exclusively immanent conception held by Marxism. 

If Marxism possesses certain elements of faith, such faith 
F. Stepun. 


130 The Christian Understanding of Man 

is tantamount to belief that human perfection is to be 
regarded as possible only in this world, whereas the funda¬ 
mental dogma of Christianity can be summed up in the 
declaration: “ My kingdom is not of this world.” This 
does not mean that Christianity has no plans for this world, 
or that it is not prepared to recognize any mode of con¬ 
duct designed for it; it means only that the dynamic im¬ 
pulse for the Christian is inseparable from belief in God 
and in the possibility of life after death. To a Marxist such 
a belief appears completely nonsensical. Nowhere are the 
well known words of St. Paul more appropriate than in 
this connection — “ For the Jews require a sign, and the 
Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, 
unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks 
foolishness.” From the Marxist standpoint Christian doc¬ 
trine is simply folly; and for the Christian, Marxism is the 
“ wisdom of this world ” and “ of the princes of this world, 
that come to nought.” 

There exist within Christianity several attempts at solv¬ 
ing the problem of the relation between this world and 
the other. The most thoroughgoing of these attempts, 
asceticism, held life in this world to be of no account, and 
saw significance in earthly existence only in so far as it was 
a transition to another life. A more moderate solution 
sought to define the purpose of human existence in terms 
of the revelation through faith of its relation to a life 
beyond. There has always existed in the Christian tradi¬ 
tion, however, the tendency to conceive of the Kingdom 
of God as an exclusively earthly system, a city of God on 
earth, a kind of earthly New Jerusalem. The Eastern 
Church found fault with the Roman Catholic Church 
because it believed its doctrines and dogmas to contain the 
seed of a false interpretation of the Christian faith. It was 
Dostoievski’s belief that the whole of French socialism was 


N. N. Alexeiev 


131 

nothing but a further development of this erroneous Ro¬ 
man Catholic idea. 

In our opinion, however, this conception is not specifi¬ 
cally Roman, but rather Jewish, in so far as the doctrine of 
the New Jerusalem on earth has the worldly power of the 
Messiah as the basis of it. This makes it easier to under¬ 
stand why certain Christian sects, both in the East and in 
the West (Hussites, Taborites and many Protestant sects) 
have remained closer in spirit to the Old Testament and 
have been attracted to the idea of a New Jerusalem on 
earth and even to religious communism. It is to this type 
of thought that, generally speaking, the more recent apos¬ 
tles of the earthly New Jerusalem, from the French utopian 
socialists to Weitling, G. Kulman, and others, belong. 
Considered in the broadly historical sense, Marxism has 
also sprung out of this soil, but, in contrast to religious and 
Christian socialism, it has completely detached the King¬ 
dom of God from the idea of God, and has introduced in 
its stead the new elements which have been described. 
Some of these may approach the Christian idea of man, 
but others show how far removed it is from Marxism. 

(c) The third fundamental difference between Chris¬ 
tianity and Marxism lies in the fact that it is impossible 
to sever the idea of personality from Christian anthropol¬ 
ogy, whereas this does not constitute an essential element 
in the Marxist conception of man. 

We know that throughout the history of Christian phi¬ 
losophy there have existed several theories of human na¬ 
ture. Even those which were farthest removed from a 
philosophical “ personalism ” (for example, those which 
rejected the idea of man as an individual hypostasis and, 
so to speak, dissolved him into a series of relations) were 
more “ personalistic ” than Marxism. For such types of 
thought, man in his relation to God, as a being created “ in 


132 The Christian Understanding of Man 

the Word,” is essentially a responsible creature, that is, 
a “ center ” of responsible and free decisions, being called 
upon to determine the direction of his own life. This sense 
of responsibility constitutes the real nature of man, but it 
is completely absent from Marxism. Man, according to 
the latter philosophy, has no personal center of his own: 
he is only one of a number of relations for that to which 
man is related is society, which is not personal (as God is 
personal) but only a sum-total of relations. 

This constitutes a great difference between the concep¬ 
tion of relations as found in Marxism and those of which 
Christian doctrine speaks, for the latter relations are only 
to be understood in terms of the relation of the Creator to 
the creature. Created man is nothing other than a repro¬ 
duction of the original pattern which remains the same. 
God created man in his own image: which presupposes that 
the original always overshadows the image. If God is a 
“ person ” in the fullest sense of the word, it follows that 
man is a kind of “ reduced ” person, and not only by virtue 
of his imperfection, but even after his resurrection in the 
Kingdom of God, where he does not become God but only 
appears in a closer relationship to him. This gives rise 
to an unbridgeable gulf between the Christian and the 
Marxist conceptions of human nature, for the Marxist man 
is not created after any pattern. He is molded according 
to the model which evolves during the historical process 
and as a result of the progressive march of humanity. The 
dominating classes and individuals, bearers of historical 
ideals, create in their own classconsciousness the concep¬ 
tion of a perfect man, which has never yet existed and 
which is yet to be born. They try to appropriate for them¬ 
selves the prerogative of the creator. 

Yet our examination of Marxist teaching about the inci¬ 
dental nature of personality has convinced us that the 


N. N. Alexeiev 


m 

Marxist man is a far more ephemeral creature than the 
Christian “ image of God.” And it is here — in the prac¬ 
tical attitude toward man — that the enormous difference 
between Marxism and Christianity comes out very plainly. 
The social practice of Marxism knows only one problem: 69 
the transformation of the irrational, nonessential qualities 
conferred by the process of history on the individual of 
bourgeois culture into the “ accidental ” ones of Marxism, 
and the creation, by means of a radical reconstruction of 
social conditions, of the perfect human personality. The 
real historical man is here not an end in himself, not an 
ultimate value, but only an instrument for the purpose of 
creating the society of the future; merely material to be 
operated on by society. Reference is often made, of course, 
to the fact that historical Christianity has also had its peri¬ 
ods of terrorism. But Christian terrorism does not arise 
out of the foundation of its teaching, that is, out of the 
Gospels, but is a denial of it; whereas the Marxist principle 
of molding the individual into something impersonal is a 
natural consequence of its tenets. According to the Chris¬ 
tian ethic each man is of worth for his own sake, a con¬ 
ception which Marxism resolutely repudiates. The Chris¬ 
tian ethic is one of loving one’s neighbor; it is not an ethic 
which is derived from the historically determined, relative 
values of human existence. 

(d) The fourth fundamental difference between Chris¬ 
tianity and Marxism consists in the complete rejection by 
the latter of the idea of the “ inner man” whereas this con¬ 
stitutes the foundation of the Christian conception of man. 

“ For behold, the Kingdom of God is within you this 
declaration is the basis of the Christian religion and of the 
conception of man which is based upon it. The Marxist 

69 For other problems, however, see Plekhanov, Fundamental Problems 
of Marxism, Eng. trans. by Martin Lawrence, 1929. — Translator’s note. 


134 The Christian Understanding of Man 

“ kingdom of God on earth ” is, on the contrary, nothing 
more than an external economic organization by reason of 
which a new form of consciousness will emerge as a “ reflex 
and echo ” of the new economic basis of life. The problem 
of the specifically inner and spiritual character of human 
nature lies completely outside the whole of Marxist teach¬ 
ing and the logical Marxist proletarian or intellectual. 
What is there of practical worth for militant Marxism in 
the following words of Christ: “ What shall it profit a man 
if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? ” The 
Marxist, on the contrary, wants to win the whole world, and 
as for his soul he does not trouble about it. The man who, 
in St. Peter’s phrase, is “ precious in the sight of God,” “ the 
hidden man of the heart,” only provokes a pitying smile in 
the Marxist. Once for all we must remind ourselves that 
in this respect there is an unfathomable abyss not only be¬ 
tween Marxism and Christianity, but between Marxism 
and all other religions and philosophies which recognize 
the spiritual nature of man, whether it be Hinduism or 
Platonism or any other. Marxism belongs wholly to the 
type of civilization which has lost all understanding of the 
problems of man’s inner life. For this reason such ideas as 
an inner ethical imperative or responsibility to God or to 
one’s conscience are entirely foreign to Marxism. 

The Marxist ethic, as we have seen, is simply a class 
ethic, that is one which deliberately rejects what St. Paul 
describes as the “ fruit of the Spirit,” namely “ love, joy, 
peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, 
temperance.” 70 For the thoroughgoing Marxist these are 
neither virtues nor vices (because he has no room for such 
terminology) : they are only ideological principles which 
divert the energies required for the class war and are there¬ 
fore to be cast aside. In the class struggle, as in every other, 
70 Gal. 5:22. 


N. N. Alexeiev 


135 

“ hatred, strife, jealousies, wraths, faction, divisions, envy- 
ings, murders,” 71 are far more necessary. It must be un¬ 
derstood, once for all, that we are here once more faced 
with a fundamental contradiction between the Marxist and 
the Christian idea of man. 

4. CONCLUSIONS 

In the development of our subject we have placed before 
us two different aims: a theoretical and a practical. In 
pursuing these aims we desired above all to remain on 
philosophical ground, on which alone any discussion be¬ 
tween Marxism and Christianity is possible. We believe 
in the ultimate truth of Christianity as a religion, and are 
convinced that Christianity includes whatever is true and 
genuine in Marxism. But fundamentally religious faith 
only embodies such “ true and genuine ” values in the 
philosophically potential state. It would be scarcely pos¬ 
sible to assert that, in what concerns the actualization of 
what is only potential, all the various philosophies which 
have arisen on Christian soil and have dealt with ethical 
and social doctrines contain the ultimate truth and are in 
no need of improvement. In the “ anteroom ” of the 
Christian faith, that is, in philosophy, any claim to possess 
absolute truth is unfounded and false. The familiar at¬ 
tempt made by representatives of Christian thought to 
prove that all the social and philosophical doctrines of so¬ 
cialism are implicit in Christian philosophy has led to an 
exaggeration. 

For it is a serious error, often committed by historical 
Christianity, to elevate any theological, philosophical, or 
social-ethical teaching to the position of an absolute truth 
which can never be surpassed; or to proclaim any one 
Christian teacher as alone orthodox; but it is this practice 
71 Gal. 5:20-21. 


136 The Christian Understanding of Man 

which Marxism has taken over from historical Christianity. 
Oriental theosophy showed far greater wisdom by acting in 
accordance with the “ synthetic ” spirit in its dealings with 
the differing, though fundamentally orthodox, philosophi¬ 
cal doctrines, rather than in the spirit of exclusiveness 
which demanded the outlawing of heresies. Thus if we 
agree that Christian philosophy does not necessarily con¬ 
tain truths which should be regarded as absolute, we should 
concede that other philosophical, ethical and social ideas 
which have not sprung from Christian belief may be in¬ 
structive. What truths there are in many non-Christian 
ideas are often the result of the sins of historical Christian¬ 
ity, and the willingness of Christian thinkers to be in¬ 
structed by them is actually equivalent to the admission of 
their own sins. From this point of view the foregoing in¬ 
vestigations possess a certain theoretical importance for 
Christian philosophy and from them the following con¬ 
clusions may be drawn: 

(1) The disappearance of German idealistic philoso¬ 
phy, which formed the highest point in the spiritual de¬ 
velopment of Europe in its most bourgeois period, and the 
“ anthropological reaction ” against idealism, are to be wel¬ 
comed from the Christian standpoint, inasmuch as a con¬ 
crete idea of man replaced abstractions such as Fichte’s 
“ Ich ” and Hegel’s “ absolute idea.” 

(2) The thought which emerged conspicuously in the 
post-Hegelian philosophy, that the problem of man is of 
far greater importance to philosophy than other philo¬ 
sophical questions (e.g., time, space, causality, etc.) is also 
justifiable from the Christian standpoint and should con¬ 
stitute a point of departure for a Christian philosophical 
study of man. 

(3) Acceptable also are the modifications which Marx¬ 
ism, and those philosophical doctrines which are related 


N. N. Alexeiev 


137 

to it, have made of the old Aristotelian and Thomist view 
of man as an “ animal sociale et rationale Such modifica¬ 
tions have been introduced by the appreciation of the 
function of labor and technics, the conception of the so¬ 
cial nature of man, the relation of the latter to the perfect 
society of the future, etc. 

(4) Particularly acceptable are the ethico-social conclu¬ 
sions drawn from the above mentioned social philosophy 
which involve a vindication of the need for a radical, social 
and economic reconstruction of modern bourgeois society 
and the interests of exploited social classes. The greatest 
sin of the Christian churches is that they have hitherto de¬ 
fended the capitalist order of society and have thus sided 
with the possessors of power against the oppressed. 

The justification of one section of the philosophical con¬ 
tent of Marxism requires of us an unambiguous formula¬ 
tion of what, in Marxism, is unacceptable from the point 
of view of Christian philosophy, and cannot under any 
circumstances be adopted by the Christian: 

(1) The materialist-naturalistic form of the philosophi¬ 
cal reaction against a onesided idealism. 

(2) The fundamentally antipersonal attitude of Marx¬ 
ist teaching, and the conception of man as the sum-total of 
social-economic relations, which are incompatible with 
such ideas as responsibility, inner spiritual life, ethical au¬ 
tonomy, etc. 

(3) The thoroughgoing identification of the individual 
with the universal, and the complete absorption of the 
individual personality by the community. In a sinful 
world personality must necessarily maintain a certain 
amount of independence over against society, for only in 
the Kingdom of God can the individual be absorbed into 
the community without damage to himself. 

(4) The conception of religion as an “ opiate for the 


138 The Christian Understanding of Man 

people,” which forms the foundation of Marxist militant 
atheism. 

These are the major points which the Marxist must 
abandon if there is to be any modus vivendi between 
Marxists and Christians, who are obliged to live together 
in the same society, and who, in the light of the contacts 
described above, can to some extent work together in the 
same direction. The Christian should and can participate 
with the Marxist in the reconstruction of the world and in 
the realization of social justice. The question of how, 
while engaged in cooperating in such a task, the inevitable 
collision arising out of the fundamental antagonisms of the 
two doctrines can be avoided, is one which lies outside the 
scope of this essay. The Christian, however, must not for¬ 
get one thing: to remain faithful to himself, and not try 
to adapt himself to ideas which are foreign to him. 


PART II 


THE CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING 
OF MAN 

by 

Emil Brunner 












THE CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING OF MAN 


INTRODUCTION 

The Christian doctrine of man is one section of Christian 
theology as a whole and can only be understood against 
this background. All that the Bible says about man which 
is essential and obligatory for faith is indissolubly con¬ 
nected with that which it declares about the nature and 
the will of God, about the nature of the Trinity, and the 
eternal divine decrees, about creation, atonement and re¬ 
demption on the basis of his revelation. The Word of 
God, in which man has the ground of his being, is also the 
ground of knowledge for all that we are, both ideally 
and actually. It has only been possible to suggest these 
general theological presuppositions in this paper; indeed 
at every point this whole sketch of the Christian doctrine 
of man needs to be more fully developed. 1 

The doctrine of man does not occupy a prominent po¬ 
sition in the Bible; the Bible is far more concerned with 
God and his Kingdom than with man and his fulfilment. 
At the same time this God is always the God of man, who 
reveals his nature to man, and wills to assert his will in the 
life of man. To a limited extent the Bible is anthropocen- 

i The full exposition of my thought on this subject will be found in 
the book which I published recently under the title Der Mensch im Wider- 
spruch (Furche-Verlag, Berlin, 1937). The present paper is merely a 
brief summary of the main points of the book. Owing to its fragmentary 
character it can only be regarded as a passing discussion. The reader will 
find that many of the questions and objections which arise in his mind have 
already been raised and, so far as it lay in his power, answered by the 
author himself in the larger work. 


142 The Christian Understanding of Man 

trie, on a theocratic and theocentric basis. It is concerned 
with the God who became man, and with man whose aim 
it is to become like him — the “ God-Man.” But there is 
a sense in which we can say that the doctrine of man does 
occupy a privileged position in comparison with the other 
doctrines in the Bible, since its theme is of the greatest 
interest to modern man. Even those who have no interest 
in God and his Kingdom are interested in the question of 
man; indeed even those who do not dream of the divine 
destiny of man are concerned with the question of the des¬ 
tiny of man as a whole. It is the task of a Christian anthro¬ 
pology to show that it is impossible to understand man 
save in the light of God. 

The central thesis of this article may be stated thus: 
Man is a “ theological ” being; that is, his ground, his goal, 
his norm, and the possibility of understanding his own 
nature are all in God. 

The Christian understanding of man, however — like 
the Christian message as a whole — in relation to man’s 
own knowledge of himself is both positive and negative, 
missionary and polemical. The Bible does not assert that 
man is unable to gain a true knowledge of himself by means 
of his reason, by means of his natural methods of acquiring 
knowledge, by the simple experience of life, by means of 
scientific research, and by means of philosophical thought. 
On the contrary, in a decisive passage it affirms: “ Who 
among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit 
of man which is in him? ” (1 Cor. 2:11) . The Bible al¬ 
ways presupposes man’s natural and valid knowledge of 
himself; for instance, there is no reason to reject the results 
of physical anthropology, anatomy, physiology, biochem¬ 
istry or even psychology, sociology or philosophical an¬ 
thropology. Even the most rigid Christian teachers, like 
the Reformers, never questioned the validity and the ne- 


Emil Brunner 


143 

cessity of a purely rational natural doctrine of man. All 
that is the subject of human research, such as the psycho¬ 
physical structure of man, his psycho-physical development 
within time and space, both as an individual and as a mem¬ 
ber of a species, the relations between body and mind, the 
laws of human thought, as well as the facts of human his¬ 
tory, is not derived from revelation, especially from its 
original source in the Holy Scriptures, but from the par¬ 
ticular science which deals with that special sphere of life 
or with that particular sphere of competent thought. In 
principle there is no conflict between a scientific and a 
Christian anthropology since the point of view from which 
each looks at man is quite different. All that, in principle, 
is accessible to experience within time and space is not a 
matter of faith but of science; faith, for instance, never 
competes with a scientific theory which seeks to explain 
how the human race came into existence or the stages of its 
evolution. The special object of faith is the nature and the 
destiny of man as it is to be understood from the point of 
view of God and in relation to God — to the God who dis¬ 
closes himself to us in his revelation. 

Hence the boundary between the sphere of the knowl¬ 
edge accessible through faith and rational empirical knowl 
edge can only be defined in terms of degrees. The more it 
is concerned with man as a whole, with that which includes 
not only what he is and what he ought to be but also his 
ultimate origin and his final goal, the more exclusive is the 
attitude of faith; while the more we are concerned with 
partial aspects of human existence the more autonomous, 
even from the point of view of faith, does our purely ra¬ 
tional empirical knowledge become. There is no special 
science of Christian anatomy, nor is there any specially 
Christian science of psychology or of sense-perception, but 
there is a special Christian doctrine of freedom or unfree- 


144 The Christian Understanding of Man 

dom, of the destiny and personal existence of man, which is 
more or less in sharp contrast with every other view of man. 
Thus in principle Christian anthropology is inclusive so 
far as scientific anthropology is concerned, but it is ex¬ 
clusive so far as the anthropology of another religion or 
philosophy of life is concerned. But even in this second 
case the relation is never purely negative, but must always 
be dialectical in character: no other system of religious an¬ 
thropology is without a grain of truth — nor, however, is 
it without a distortion of the truth — which affects it 
through and through. But since the man to whom the 
gospel is proclaimed is never without a total interpretation 
of his own being, however unconscious this may be, and of 
his own destiny, Christian anthropology is always, in the 
sense of that dialectic, aggressive and eager to get into 
touch with man. It is essential to it, therefore, that it 
should always carry on discussions with its rivals. 

THE PROBLEM FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF MAN 

(1) We all think we know what man is. But what man 
really is, is the great question of the ages. Not in vain were 
the words “ Know thyself ” inscribed on the temple of 
Apollo as the epitome of ultimate wisdom. Were man only 
a piece of the world — one object among many other ob¬ 
jects— as was suggested by a certain kind of positivistic 
natural philosophy of the last century — the problem of 
man would simply be one problem among many others, 
and not even one of the greatest. But man is also the sub¬ 
ject, to whom all objective problems are presented as ques¬ 
tions, or objecta. To inquire into the nature of man means 
inquiring into the mind or the spirit from which all ques¬ 
tioning springs. All problems are human problems and 
all interests are human interests. Therefore the secret of 
man extends to the ultimate depths of existence; we can- 


Emil Brunner 


145 

not understand man aright unless we take into considera¬ 
tion both the primal origin and the final end of all things. 
For man can never be understood merely from that which 
he may be empirically at any given moment; his existence 
includes his destiny. The specifically human element con¬ 
sists in being constantly disturbed and, at least in part, 
determined by the idea of destiny, of obligation. Thus 
from the very outset every merely empirical solution of 
the problem is hopeless; positivism is not merely not a 
metaphysic, it is bad metaphysics. It cuts away the very 
roots of human existence. 

(2) Since the question of man — from the point of view 
of the theory of knowledge — is fundamentally different 
from all others, the answer to the question of its practical 
significance cannot be compared with any others. The 
way in which men understand themselves decides what 
their lives will be. 

A dead thing, a living plant, even an animal, is what 
it is simply as it has been produced by nature. It does not 
understand itself, and it does not alter its life in accordance 
with its understanding of itself. Both these elements, self- 
knowledge and self-determination, are the wonderful and 
dangerous privileges of human existence. Man is the be¬ 
ing who understands himself and in this self-understanding 
decides or determines what he will do and be. This is true, 
whether this understanding of himself be right or wrong, 
superficial or profound. Differences of view about the na¬ 
ture of man create different ways of living, different civili¬ 
zations and cultures, different political, economic and social 
systems. Every form of culture, every civilization, every 
legal system, every form of economic order, every style 
in art, every kind of constitution of a state — whatever 
else it may be, is also a product of a definite view of man. 
The great differences between the cultures and civiliza- 


146 The Christian Understanding of Man 

tions of the ancient Chinese empire, of ancient India, and 
of classical Greece and Rome, were not only due to geo¬ 
graphical, climatic, and racial causes; above all they were 
due to the fact that the Indian, the Chinese, the Greek and 
the Roman had such a different view of his own nature — 
that is, of human existence as a whole. 

Thus — to take only one definite illustration — the doc¬ 
trine of the jus naturale of late antiquity, which is based 
upon the Stoic conception of man, is one of the elements 
which has helped to determine the formation of a legal sys¬ 
tem and of political theory and action in Europe, for cen¬ 
turies down to the French Revolution, and even on into 
the period of modern socialism and communism. Again, 
the view of women and children, which sprang from the 
Christian conception of man, has not only influenced so¬ 
cial views but it has also affected the creation of institutions, 
down to the modern legislation for the protection of the 
workers. The most powerful of all spiritual forces is man’s 
view of himself, the way in which he understands his na¬ 
ture and his destiny; indeed it is the one force which de¬ 
termines all the others which influence human life. For 
in the last resort all that man thinks and wills springs out 
of what he thinks and wills about himself, about human 
life and its meaning and its purpose. 

(3) There are many different conceptions of man; it 
would be an impossible task to try to assemble them and 
then to classify them. There are as many views of man as 
there are human beings. Myth and poetry, philosophical, 
scientific and religious doctrine are all in some way or an¬ 
other wrestling with this problem, and trying to find a solu¬ 
tion to this question which concerns us so nearly and is yet 
at the same time one of the most disturbing and tormenting 
questions of human life. And yet when we look into the 
subject a little more closely, we perceive that this infinite 


Emil Brunner 


147 

variety can be reduced to a few main types, although within 
each type it is possible to distinguish countless varieties. 
In order to perceive the distinctive element in the Chris¬ 
tian doctrine of man we shall find that it will be useful and 
indeed necessary to give a rapid survey of the other, rival 
views of man. Behind the discussion between Christianity 
and Marxism (respecting communism), and between the 
Christian and the fascist claim for totalitarian obedience, 
stands the conflict between the Christian view of man and 
a rationalistic or romantically vitalistic view of man. The 
abstract discussion on which we are here engaged is already 
a vital issue in the political and ecclesiastical spheres. 

(a) The simplest, the least mysterious and the most 
primitive form of anthropology is the view which regards 
man as part of this world, especially of the animal world; 
according to this view man is either a highly developed 
or (according to the latest theory) a most degenerate ani¬ 
mal. This conception should not be confused with the 
process of purely scientific research into the nature of man 
— that is, with the methods of natural science — which is 
called the anthropology of natural science. For scientific 
anthropology as such does not claim to give a total explana¬ 
tion of man’s being, in competition with an idealistic or 
Christian anthropology; it merely contemplates a definite 
aspect of human existence without taking a definite posi¬ 
tion either negatively or positively on the question whether 
man is more than this object which is being studied in this 
way from the point of view of natural science, or not. We 
make a sharp distinction between scientific research in 
terms of natural science and a naturalistic metaphysic, thus 
also between a naturalistic anthropology and the anthro¬ 
pology of natural science. The naturalistic view is ex¬ 
pressed in various forms. Its crudest expression is the ma¬ 
terialistic variety, which conceives man as a being composed 


148 The Christian Understanding of Man 

of material elements, and the mental and spiritual life 
either as a secretion or as a kind of electromagnetic effect of 
these material elements. Biological naturalism is certainly 
more modern; it refrains from reducing all that is non¬ 
physical to the material plane, suggesting, however, that 
all spiritual values spring from vital values, that all spir¬ 
itual norms are derived from functions of adaptation, and 
that all spiritual truths are merely practical and useful 
methods to help man to adapt himself to his sense environ¬ 
ment; in so doing it denies the independent reality of mo¬ 
rality and of religion. All that is higher is for it only a 
product of a far-reaching differentiation of the same one 
vital element; man is “ simply ” an animal of a highly dif¬ 
ferentiated kind. 

(b) The second fundamental view starts from the op¬ 
posite end, from the spirit, as something which is totally 
different from natural existence. Man differs from the 
animal precisely because he studies natural science, because 
he has a desire to inquire into the truth as truth, because 
he cares not only about what is useful but about what is 
just and good and holy. The philosophy of Greek idealism 
— that is, that idealism which had not yet been influenced 
by Christian ideas, which spring from an entirely different 
source — regarded this spiritual nature of man as a divine 
nature, as a kind of substantial relationship, a participation 
in the divine reason. Thus the fundamental being of man 
is not animal but divine. The physical part of man is 
something foreign to his nature, it is a sort of relic which 
is not essential to human existence. Alongside of this 
boldly speculative idealism there is also a kind of moderate 
idealism, which, although it asserts the impossibility of de¬ 
riving the spirit and its values and norms from any kind 
of sense data, does not proceed, from this standpoint, to the 
conclusions of the philosophy of religion: for it the spir- 


Emil Brunner 


149 

itual values and norms are the ultimate; man is regarded 
essentially as the bearer and molder of these laws and 
values, the distinctively “ human ” element is participation 
in this “ spirit,” this “ reason.” In saying this I am not 
taking into consideration the fact that very often this kind 
of idealism is combined with the Christian view of creation 
and of personality. 

(c) Just as the first view starts from the body and the 
second from the spirit, so the third view starts from the 
“ soul.” The romantic and mystical theory believes that 
behind the contrast between nature and spirit it can dis¬ 
cern the original source of both, free from all contradic¬ 
tions, a principle of ideality, which manifests itself in the 
human “ soul,” in its feeling, in its intuition, in its mystical 
experience of unity. The essential distinctive element in 
man lies neither in his physical nor in his spiritual nature, 
but in his half-unconscious “ soul ”; there man is close to 
the heart of the All, there he lives by the life of the All. 
This is the source of his creative existence, and the creative 
element is the distinctive quality of humanity. It is of the 
essence of this romantic, mystical anthropology that its con¬ 
ceptions cannot possibly be as clear and distinct as the two 
others; thus we find its adherents not so much among peo¬ 
ple of a scientific turn of mind or among philosophers, as 
among people who seek to find the meaning of their lives 
in feeling rather than in thought, or among those to whom 
art, above all, is the starting point for their understanding 
of the riddle of existence. 

Each of these three fundamental views is based on prin¬ 
ciple; that is, each looks at man as a whole, in the light 
of one single principle of interpretation, either from the 
point of view of natural existence, or from that of the spirit, 
or from that of intuition and feeling. The fact that each 
of these views is so unified and coherent gives each its spe- 


150 The Christian Understanding of Man 

cial strength and impressiveness; at the same time, however, 
it also gives it its particular weakness and makes its inter¬ 
pretation appear rather forced. Hence at all periods of 
history the most varied syntheses and combinations have 
been essayed; even to mention them here, however, is im¬ 
possible. But in spite of all the keenness and profundity 
with which these views have been elaborated, none of them 
has been able to make the enduring impression of their 
more one-sided rivals, and the most forceful thinkers have 
always inclined to the more one-sided solutions. 

(d) There is, however, a fourth type of anthropology 
which ought to be mentioned; owing to the fact that it 
cannot be systematically presented it is usually ignored. 
The simple man — even when he is not conscious of it — 
always possesses a more or less synthetic anthropology — 
neither naturalistic, nor idealistic, nor mystical — but a 
view which takes those three fundamental categories of 
interpretation into account and applies them in an un¬ 
systematic, naive way, more or less profoundly, but also 
in a more or less arbitrary manner. The nonphilosophical 
man takes for granted that man is “ composed of body, 
mind, and spirit,” and yet that he is a unity, but of the why 
and the wherefore of all this he knows nothing. He sees 
the animal and the material sides of man, but he also 
sees the “ higher ” side of man: the sense of a spiritual 
destiny, a sense of obligation, something normative and 
significant. He sees the contrast between what is and what 
ought to be, between the eternal aspect of man’s destiny 
and the fact of death; he sees that man is both bound and 
free; but he sees this without really knowing what it all 
means, without being able to give a clear account of man 
which is based upon ultimate truth. He knows himself 
as man, but he does not know what it means to be human. 

All science, philosophy and religion build upon this 


Emil Brunner 


151 

naive, prereflective understanding of man, by developing 
this fundamental self-understanding of man in all kinds 
of ways, deepening, transforming, and even distorting it. 
The Christian message is also related to this simple under¬ 
standing of man. 

THE OBJECT OF CHRISTIAN ANTHROPOLOGY 

Although the biblical view of man does not spring from 
natural experience or from rational thought but from the 
divine revelation, yet its object is simply man as he actually 
is, the empirical man. Its aim is to throw light upon the 
mystery of this man, that is, upon ourselves whom every¬ 
one knows — and yet does not know; that mystery which, 
to some extent, everyone knows as that of the contradiction 
between what man is and what man ought to be. 

When we pierce to the heart of these things we see 
clearly that the one characteristic which distinguishes man 
from all other creatures known to us is not his intellect 
nor his power to create culture, but this simple and im¬ 
pressive fact: that he is responsible and personal. If any¬ 
one could say what this responsible personal existence is, 
whence responsibility comes, what its aim is and why it 
is that the actual man is always in conflict with his true 
responsibility, he would have found the key to the mystery. 
Responsibility has a source and a goal, there is a basis for 
responsibility, something which makes man responsible, 
and there is a goal of responsibility, a fulfilment of respon¬ 
sibility. Man understood as a responsible person, from 
the very outset, is not regarded as an isolated being but 
as a related being; this relatedness is understood in a two¬ 
fold sense. Man’s relation toward that authority which 
makes him responsible is one of obligation; he also has 
a relation to the others to whom responsibility binds him. 
Of what character and of what origin is this twofold ele- 


152 The Christian Understanding of Man 

ment which binds and unites? Why is it that man always 
has this twofold responsibility, and is also aware of it, and 
yet again that he is in opposition to it, and is not rightly 
aware of it? 

None of the “ natural ” doctrines which have already 
been outlined, doctrines which man has evolved from his 
own inner consciousness, can give any real answer to this 
question, which is the central question of human existence 
as a whole. Naturalism has no idea of responsibility, since 
it knows no authority which can make man responsible. 
Idealism may indeed seek to produce such an authority 
in some spiritual law or value; but it is unable to explain 
why it is that man is in conflict with his own sense of 
responsibility. All it does is to substitute two principles 
for the “ contradiction ” : a “ higher ” and a “ lower ” prin¬ 
ciple in man; this simply destroys the unity of personality 
as well as responsibility for the “ contradiction.” The 
mystical romantic doctrine evades both the problem of 
personal existence and that of responsibility. The simple 
human being, it is true, has some sense of responsibility, 
and is also dimly aware of the presence of the contradic¬ 
tion; but he has no idea either of its source or of its sig¬ 
nificance. 

The Christian revelation does give an answer to this 
central question, and it does so in such a pointed way that 
we who always tend either to evade it or to depreciate its 
significance are obliged to recognize its vital importance. 
The Christian revelation answers this question by showing 
that the source of man’s responsibility is the same as its 
content, namely, unselfish, spontaneous love; it is this love 
which makes him responsible, and it is this love again 
which he owes to his neighbor. Further, the Christian 
answer, where it reveals the nature of true responsibility 
also reveals the actual depth of the contradiction in man as 


Emil Brunner 


153 

he actually is. Finally, the Christian answer, by unveil¬ 
ing the secret of human personality, is able both to achieve 
the removal of the contradiction and the restoration of 
integral personality and union with persons. This is the 
content and the meaning of the three following statements, 
in which the whole Christian doctrine of man may be 
summed up: 

(1) Man has been created in the image of God — imago 
Dei. 

(2) Through sin man has come to be in a state of op¬ 
position to his divine destiny — peccatum originis. 

(3) In Jesus Christ — who reveals to man both his origi¬ 
nal nature and his contradiction — in this actual revela¬ 
tion, man is restored to his original unity — restitutio 
imaginis. 

These statements are statements of faith, that is, they 
do not claim to be capable of rational proof; on the con¬ 
trary, they spring from the divine revelation alone and 
therefore they can only be grasped as truth in faith. But 
since they refer to the actual man and unveil the secret 
of the contradiction in human nature, and at the same 
time remove it by faith, they also claim that no experience 
and no correct ways of thinking can contradict them, but 
that, on the contrary, through them both are placed in 
their right context. The Word of God does not contradict 
reason, but it places it within its right context, which it 
cannot find of itself, and it ruthlessly lays bare all sham 
reason. 


THE DOCTRINE OF THE “ IMAGO DEI ” 

(1) The first truth the Christian concept of the imago 
Dei implies is this: that it is impossible to understand man 
in the light of his own nature; man can only be understood 
in the light of God. The relation between the knowledge 


154 The Christian Understanding of Man 

of God and that of man is different from the relation be¬ 
tween the knowledge of God and that of a thing — a bit 
of the world — because the relation between God and man 
is different from the relation between God and a thing. 
The belief that God is the creator of all things is of course 
fundamental to the thought of the Bible, and is an integral 
part of the Christian message. But this does not mean that 
because this is God’s relation to the universe, his relation 
to mankind is exactly the same. Israel knew Yahweh first 
of all as “ Lord ” and only after that as the Creator of the 
world. I can only understand what the creation of the 
world means when I know what God’s attitude toward 
me is, that is, that God is my Lord. Because God addresses 
me in his Word as the Lord I know that God the Lord 
is the Creator. The biblical idea of creation is not a 
rational, metaphysical theory of the origin of the world. 
From the very outset, the biblical idea of creation in¬ 
cludes the special relation of God to man, namely, that 
God reveals himself to man in his Word as the Lord. 

The God who reveals himself is always the God whose 
face is turned toward man; the anthropo-tropos theos. The 
God whom we, as Christians, call the Creator is the God 
who reveals himself to man; he is indeed the God who un¬ 
veils the mystery of God in the mystery of man, the God 
who unveils both the mystery of God and the mystery of 
man in the incarnation of the Word. The God who first 
of all and in a special way has to do with man, the God who 
shows himself to man as the Lord, is the Creator. 

The converse, therefore, is also true: the being which 
is related to God in a special way — in a way in which no 
animal, no plant, and still more no dead thing is related 
to God — is man. Hence the knowledge of man is very 
different from that of a thing or an animal. It is possible 
to describe a “ thing ” very fully without remembering 


Emil Brunner 


155 

that it is a creature made by God. The fact that it has 
been created is not essential for the understanding of its 
nature. But when we come to man the whole situation 
is quite different. Of course it is possible to study human 
anatomy without thinking of God; but it is not possible 
to describe the specifically human element in man, that 
which is peculiar to man as such, in contradistinction from 
everything else, without gaining a glimpse of the “ dimen¬ 
sion of God.” The distinctively human element in man 
is not a state of existence which can be described inde¬ 
pendently of the relation to God; it contains something 
peculiar which defies isolated description, that is, the ele¬ 
ment of transcendence. In the very fact that man seeks a 
ground and a meaning for his existence he transcends him¬ 
self. Every specifically human act, since it is related to a 
ground and a meaning, is an act of transcendence. Ulti¬ 
mately this ground and this aim always ends in God. Man 

— whether he will or no — is always a “ theological ” be¬ 
ing; that is, he is a being whose natural tendency is to seek 
after the Ultimate; it is this tendency which stirs him to 
thought and enquiry. 

This does not mean that the idea of God can be added 
to human existence like any other idea, so that it would 
be possible to describe the nature of man or the idea of 
God or man’s relation with God as independent entities. 
No, the truth is that the specific element in man, the hu¬ 
man element, always contains this relation to God; thus 
every view of man which ignores this relation to God fails 
to perceive the specific element in human existence. In 
speaking of man’s “ relation to God ” I mean not only 
religion, but something which forms part of every human 
act, whether it be legal, artistic, scientific, moral or re¬ 
ligious. The more an act is concerned with man as a whole 

— that is, is a central or a total act — the more clearly 


156 The Christian Understanding of Man 

man’s relation to God appears. But man is not directly 
aware of this fact, and even when he does become aware 
of it he is still far from being in a position to perceive the 
basis and significance of this truth. 

The Bible proclaims this truth when it says that man can 
only understand his being, that is, the distinctive character 
of his human existence, from the God who reveals him¬ 
self in his Word. The being of man is related to God, and 
indeed, to put it more exactly, man’s existence has been 
posited by God as related to him; thus man’s relatedness 
to God is first of all a relation of God to man, and on the 
basis of that alone is it a relation of man to God. 

(2) The more detailed doctrine of the Bible concerning 
the specific being of man is that man, and man alone, has 
been created “ in the image of God.” What the passage 
(Gen. 1:26) —where this expression occurs for the first 
time — meant in the mind of the author in his own day, is 
not so important as the explicit and implicit understand¬ 
ing of this phrase in the whole view of man in the Old 
Testament and in the New. The biblical concept of man 
appears not only where this phrase, the “ image of God,” 
is actually used; but wherever it is suggested that man is 
like God or that there is any analogy between man and 
God, this truth is implied. Now, however, we must make 
this question more pointed: In what sense can we speak of 
such an analogy, of such a relation? How are we to under¬ 
stand this parabolical method of speech? 

The best and the most illuminating comment on this 
statement is the saying of Paul: “ But we all, with open face 
beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed 
into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the 
Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18). Man bears within 
his own nature an image of God because and in so far as 
God “ looks at ” him His “ image ” is a kind of reflection. 


Emil Brunner 


*57 

But far more relevant for the thought of the Bible than 
this expression, which is drawn from the aesthetic sphere, 
is that of the “ Word.” Man’s distinctive quality consists 
in the fact that God turns to him and addresses him. 
In this “ address ” God gives man his distinctive human 
quality. Even the image of Christ is preeminently one 
that has been imparted through the Word; the same re¬ 
lation which Paul describes under the figure of an “ im¬ 
age,” in the passage which has just been quoted, he 
describes at other points by the more illuminating and 
definite idea of the “ Word,” to which, on the part of man, 
there corresponds hearing, understanding, and believing. 
Thus — this is the fundamental view of the Bible — man 
gains his distinctiveness, his truly human nature, by the 
fact that God speaks to him and that man in faith re¬ 
ceives this Word and answers it with the “ Yes ” of faith. 
In ordinary language we express this by saying that man 
is the being who is responsible. This is his distinctively 
human quality, to be a being who is responsible to God. 

The idea of responsibility is primarily a general concept. 
It is an idea which is not confined to the world of Chris¬ 
tian thought. Every human being has some idea of re¬ 
sponsibility, and everyone is aware, in some way or another, 
that he is responsible. Further: every human being is 
aware, even if only very dimly, that this fact of responsi¬ 
bility means something which affects the totality of his life, 
and the particular quality and destiny of man as man. Ani¬ 
mals have no sense of responsibility. Man always possesses 
responsibility, and — this too should be taken into account 
in thinking of the general knowledge of man’s responsi¬ 
bility — in all that he does he is responsible, even if he him¬ 
self is “ irresponsible,” that is, even if he acts without 
recognizing his responsibility, or even in opposition to it. 

But whatever man’s general sense of responsibility may 


158 The Christian Understanding of Man 

include or not, the Christian doctrine is related to it in a 
twofold way: that of critical denial and fulfilment. Man 
is not informed: “ You know nothing about responsi¬ 
bility! ” but: “ All that you know about responsibility al¬ 
ready, in a dim and confused way, the Word of God reveals 
to you as the fact that you have been created in the Word 
of God.” 

The point at issue is responsible existence. It is not that 
man receives responsibility as a quality to be added to his 
human existence; but responsible existence is the same 
thing as truly human existence. This does not mean that 
the idea of responsibility covers everything about human 
existence, but it does emphasize the distinctively human 
element in human existence. It is true, of course, that man 
possesses anatomical and biological peculiarities which dis¬ 
tinguish him from those creatures which are nearest to 
him in the scale of creation, and give him an advantage 
over them. Above all, however, he differs from all other 
creatures known to us in his mental and spiritual nature. 
But these differences are not unconditional and clear-cut; 
there are transitions. The one thing which distinguishes 
man unconditionally from the subhuman world is this, 
that he, and he alone, is a person. But even this distinction 
is not unconditional unless we define the idea of the person 
more plainly by describing him as the responsible being. 
This brings us into the biblical sphere where man is 
called the “ image of God.” 

(3) The Bible expresses the distinctive quality of man 
by saying that he stands in a special relation to God, that 
the relation between God and man is that of “ over-against- 
ness ”; that it consists in being face to face with each other. 
God created man as the being to whom He turns, so that 
man also turns toward Him. The anthropo-tropos theos — 
the God who is turned toward man — creates the theo- 


Emil Brunner 


!59 

tropos anthropos — the man who is related to God. This 
becomes clearer when we fill this formal definition with 
content. The God who is love creates man out of love, in 
love, for love. Thus the divine love is both the basis and 
the aim of responsibility; and it is both the basis and the 
content of the specific and genuine nature of man. Both 
the origin and the meaning of man’s existence lie in the 
love of God. Man has been created in order that he may 
return the love which the Creator lavishes upon him, as 
responsive love; that he may respond to the Creator’s word 
of love with the grateful “ Yes ” of acceptance; thus man 
receives his human existence from God when he perceives 
that his being and his destiny are existence in the love of 
God. 

This act of recognition, by receiving the love of God, is 
what the Bible calls faith. Faith which receives love and 
is active in love is not something which is added to the 
being of man, but as the genuinely human, originally 
created relation between man and God, it is at the same 
time true responsibility, and thus the true nature of man. 
Man is not first of all a human being and then responsible; 
but his human existence consists in responsibility. And 
man is not first of all responsible and then in addition he 
possesses a relation to God; but his relation to God is the 
same as his responsibility. Therefore it is his relation to 
God which makes man man. This is the content of the 
biblical doctrine of the imago Dei. 

Now, however, this conception of the imago Dei should 
not be understood to mean (as it has been from the time 
of Irenaeus) that the “ imago ” merely signifies a formal 
similarity between God and man — man as the rational 
being, the fact that man is a subject or a person in the sense 
of a natura rationalis. Rather that is a rationalistic and 
individualistic transformation of the biblical idea intro- 


160 The Christian Understanding of Man 

duced by Greek philosophy, which turns the actual relation 
between God and man into a mere resemblance. The dis¬ 
tinctive element in the anthropology of the Bible is the 
fact that it draws the being of man into the actus of God. 
Man is what he is, as reactio to the actio of God. Formally, 
God’s being is actus purus or absolutus; materially it is 
groundless, spontaneous love; formally, man’s original be¬ 
ing is actus relativus; materially, it is responsive love. 

The relation between the two, however, may be thus de¬ 
scribed: love imparts itself in the determinative Word, and 
human love replies in an act of self-determination and ac¬ 
ceptance. Formally, the difference between human beings 
and all other creatures is that man is not only what he is 
posited, but he is also what he posits himself, by his own 
response. Materially, this means that he is intended for 
participation in the love of God by the acceptance of this 
original divine intention. His “ self ” exists in the divine 
Word of love; and he has this Word in the obedience of 
“ faith which worketh through love.” This fundamental 
determination of man’s nature, however, contains yet an¬ 
other element. 

Human existence in love cannot be expressed in a con¬ 
crete way toward God himself. To love — in the sense of 
agape and not of eros — means to love only “ as God loves.” 
God does not love that which is precious to him; he does 
not love in the sense of eros, that is, as searching for or find¬ 
ing value, but his love consists in giving value. His loving 
does not consist in an attraction to something valuable, but 
it consists in giving himself away. God does not love the 
“ rich,” but the “ poor.” His love is the very opposite of 
craving. But the man who is living in the love of God 
cannot love God like this. He cannot give anything to God. 
Therefore God gives him his fellow man as the recipient of 
this love. “ Love me, in giving thy love to this thy fellow 


Emil Brunner 


161 


man. Love him in my stead, out of love to me! ” Man’s 
love of God must therefore find concrete expression in the 
love of his neighbor. This is not stated as a command; it 
is the very essence of love to go “ downward,” not “ up¬ 
ward.” The twofold commandment of the love of God 
and the love of man expresses the original law of human 
existence. This means that the original being of man, from 
the very outset, and not merely afterwards, is related to the 
Thou. The nature of man is not, as Greek individualism 
regards it, first of all a natura rationalis , and then possibly 
this anima rationalis may also come into contact with others 
of the same kind; but the original nature of man is “ actual,” 
like that of the lightning which extends from one pole to 
the other. Just as God’s being is actus absolutus, so the 
being of man is actus relativus, on the basis of the divine 
actus absolutus; it is responsive actuality. The “ sub¬ 
stance ” of human existence is responsible love. This re¬ 
sponsive actuality is only possible by means of the fact that 
man has spirit; spiritual existence is only possible by means 
of the fact that mind exists; the mind only exists upon a 
biophysical basis. Thus personal existence in responsi¬ 
bility is based upon something else; it has a substratum. 
But we cannot understand human existence from the point 
of view of the substratum, but, on the contrary, we must 
understand the substratum from the point of view of per¬ 
sonal existence, for only from the point of view of the 
person do we understand man as a whole. Where we say 
“ person ” the Bible says “ heart,” and by that it means the 
personal totality in its essential relation to God and to the 
neighbor. 


MAN AS SINNER 

(1) The second main article of belief in a Christian an¬ 
thropology is that man is a sinner, that is, that his actual 


162 The Christian Understanding of Man 

existence is diametrically opposed to his origin. Here too 
we are concerned with human existence as a personal whole. 
Man does not merely “ commit ” sins, and he does not 
merely “ have ” sins, he is a sinner. His opposition to his 
original creation does not merely affect “ something in 
him ” but himself. But just as his original existence is 
actual existence, so also his “ existence-in-opposition ” is 
actual existence. The fact that man is a whole does not 
contradict his being “ actual the “ is ” in the sentence, 
“ Man is a sinner,” is something actual; this use of the word 
“ is ” means something different from the “ is ” in the sen¬ 
tence, “ The dog is a mammal,” or “ The sum of the angles 
of the triangle is one hundred and eighty degrees.” The 
“ is ” which describes sinful existence is sui generis pre¬ 
cisely because it describes personal existence. The doc¬ 
trine of original sin, in its ecclesiastical form, expresses this 
truth very imperfectly, since it turns “ actual ” personal 
existence into a substantial deformity. If there is anything 
which according to the teaching of the Bible ought not to 
be conceived in a substantial manner it is sin. The distinc¬ 
tion between original sin and sinful acts should be formu¬ 
lated as “ actual existence which manifests itself in par¬ 
ticular acts.” 

From this point of view, sin means a threefold perversion 
of created existence: it perverts man’s relation to God, to 
his neighbor, and to himself. But perversion does not 
mean annihilation. Man has not ceased to be a person; 
but the original meaning of personal existence has been 
turned into its opposite: existence in the love of God, in 
faith and love, has been transformed into an existence 
which is opposed to God, and that is, an existence in the 
wrath of God; existence in the love of one’s neighbor has 
been transformed into that selfishness which “ uses ” our 
neighbor; unified personal existence has been transformed 


Emil Brunner 163 

into division of personality, “ existence-in-contradiction ” 
to man’s origin. 

It is as impossible to say when and how this transforma¬ 
tion took place as it is to say when and how the creation 
took place. My creation by God cannot be measured by 
that which takes place on the temporal plane; nor can the 
perversion of my being be measured by that which takes 
place on the temporal plane. The “ creation ” and the 
“ fall ” have a very indirect and remote connection with 
what science tells us about the genesis of the causal world 
of time and space and the changes which take place therein. 
We can no more localize personal transactions between God 
and man in the world of time and space than we can local¬ 
ize the spirit of man in the brain. We ought to bear this 
in mind not only when we read the first chapter of Genesis, 
but also when we read chapter 3. There cannot be a “ his¬ 
torical ” account of the creation; nor, likewise, can there be 
a “ historical ” account of the fall. In Jesus Christ it is 
revealed to faith that we have been created in the Word 
of God, and also that we have fallen away from this our 
origin. As we all have this common origin — even though 
the human race may not be uniform from the biological 
point of view — so we have all experienced this breach with 
our origin, and this fact determines the whole of our 
existence. 

(2) Therefore, if we wish to understand ourselves in the 
light of truth, as we actually are, we must bear these two 
facts in mind: the fact that we have been created in the 
image of God, and the fact of the “ contradiction ” — that 
is, that we have turned against our origin. This is the 
reason why our responsibility is ambiguous, and our sense 
of responsibility — which we possess as sinners, apart from 
redemption through Jesus Christ — is ambiguous. Our re¬ 
sponsibility is now determined by three factors, which indi- 


164 The Christian Understanding of Man 

cate the presence of the contradiction: by guilt, bondage, 
and the law. 

Guilt. As sinners we are “ without excuse ” (anapolo- 
getoi, Rom. 1:20). This conception recalls the revelation 
of the origin and the creation of man and of the world; at 
the same time it also indicates the fall, the breach in man’s 
relation with God. We are not only “ under an obliga¬ 
tion we are guilty. It is guilt which most profoundly 
separates us from God; therefore the forgiveness of guilt 
constitutes the heart of the gospel. We are utterly unable 
to deal with our guilt; it cannot be removed save by the 
intervention of God. Guilt means that the God who con¬ 
fronts us is no longer the loving God but the wrathful God. 

Bondage. Sin is not merely the opposition of man’s will 
to God, but it means such an alienation of man’s nature 
from God that he can no longer do the will of God, indeed 
he does not even wish to do it. Sin is the will that is bound, 
enslaved. But this bondage must not be conceived in any 
deterministic kind of way, but in a strictly personal and 
actual manner. In our will a hostile power is active against 
God. This bondage — like the “ is ” of sinful existence — 
is sui generis, and must not be confused with any causal 
relation. The Bible does not know the concept of “ origi¬ 
nal sin ” but that of “ death ” ( thanatos ), which as the 
power of sin enslaves the will. 

Both guilt and bondage, however, point to a third ele¬ 
ment: the law. Through sin we are under the law. We 
know God’s will no longer as the will of one who loves and 
gives, but as that of one who demands, in a legalistic way. 
Thus the natural sense of responsibility is the conscious¬ 
ness of the “ thou shalt.” This sense of responsibility is 
universal; apart from faith it is the clearest indication of 
man’s being in the Word of God and of the imago Dei. 
But its legalistic interpretation means the perversion of this 


Emil Brunner 


165 

original relation. The law is the way in which the angry 
God makes his will known to us; it is the way in which the 
will of God is made known to us as sinners. Therefore 
the law is the truly dialectical concept in the Christian un¬ 
derstanding of God. Redemption is above all redemption 
from the law, and yet redemption takes place in the fulfil¬ 
ment of the law by Christ and works itself out in the — 
relative — fulfilment of the law on the part of man who has 
been born again, through the Holy Spirit. Our relation 
to God and our neighbor is determined by the opposition 
between what is and what ought to be, between what ought 
to be and what is desired. The content of the law is love, 
and yet love and law are opposed. That which is good 
merely from the legalistic point of view is just as much a 
manifestation of the breach made by sin as that which is 
evil from the point of view of the law. This is the “ curse 
of the law it shows the depth of the alienation of man 
from God. All non-Christian religion and morality — as 
Luther saw with his profound intuition — is legalistic. 
The fact that man has this (legalistic) morality and religion 
is the trace of the imago and of his origin; but the fact that 
he knows the nature and the will of God only in a legalistic 
manner is the sign of the fall. Thus all religion and mo¬ 
rality is twofold: it is a token of man’s origin and a sign 
of the contradiction. Legalism makes man’s relation to 
God and to his neighbor impersonal. Only in Jesus Christ 
do we perceive the divine “ Thou ” and the “ Thou ” of 
our fellow man; only in Jesus Christ — through the fact 
that the Word of the origin which we have lost returns to 
us as the Word in which God’s love is personally present 
— is the original personal relation, existence in the love 
of God, restored through faith. This is due to the fact that 
Jesus Christ removes the curse of the law. 

(3) Thus the actual man, from the point of view of 


166 The Christian Understanding of Man 

Jesus Christ, that is, regarded from the point of view of his 
origin, is the being whose life is an “ existence-in-contra¬ 
diction ” — the fact of his origin is contradicted by the fact 
of sin. This contradiction manifests itself in all genuinely 
human phenomena: in anxiety, in longing, in doubt, in 
despair, in a bad conscience. It also manifests itself in the 
fact that human philosophy always breaks up into contra¬ 
dictions: the contradiction between idealism and natural¬ 
ism, pantheism and deism, determinism and indetermin¬ 
ism, etc. It manifests itself in the variety of religions and 
systems of morality, which cannot be reduced to a common 
denominator. It manifests itself above all in the “ dialec¬ 
tic ” of man’s natural knowledge of God, namely, that we 
know God, and yet that we do not know him; that we want 
to serve him, and yet that we do not want to do so; that we 
seek him, and yet that we flee from him. This contradic¬ 
tion is peculiar to man, that is, to the “ empirical,” “ natu¬ 
ral ” man, outside the redemption wrought by Christ. 

This is particularly true of responsibility, of personal ex¬ 
istence. No human being is without some sense of re¬ 
sponsibility; but no human being exists who really knows 
what responsibility is, and certainly no one really lives a 
responsible existence. For to live as a truly responsible 
being would indeed be the same as living in the love of 
God. A human being without any sense of responsibility 
would not only be a human being in whom man’s relation 
to God had become distorted; it would have been de¬ 
stroyed; he would have become wholly inhuman. A truly 
responsible human being would be one wholly united to 
God, truly humane. Our human existence always contains 
elements of inhumanity; and in all inhumanity there still 
exists a spark of humanity. It is the same with our exist¬ 
ence as persons. We are personal; but our personal exist¬ 
ence is always at the same time impersonal; we are domi- 


Emil Brunner 


167 

nated by abstractions; we make the human element the 
means of the impersonal — civilization, the state, the power 
of “ something.” Indeed we ourselves are the slaves of 
“ something.” We seek to master God and man by means 
of ideas. We fall a prey to the world and its goods. The 
truly personal existence is the same as existence in the love 
of God, existence in Christ. 

PARTICULAR PROBLEMS 

Having thus indicated the fundamental aspects of Chris¬ 
tian anthropology we can now attack some of the particular 
problems. 

(1) The Individual and the Community. One of the 
most important of those manifestations of the contradiction 
is the fact that our understanding of ourselves and of our 
destiny breaks up into individualism and collectivism. 
This contrast is one which runs through the whole history 
of humanity and is never settled; for man, having lost his 
center, can only fly from one extreme to the other. He 
could only find his center in that existence in which and 
for which he has been created. Individualism emphasizes 
the independence of the self; collectivism stresses the bond 
with the community, but both do this in such a way that 
each destroys the other. In the Word of God, however, 
man is wholly a person; thus he is independent. “ If the 
Son makes you free, then are ye free indeed.” Nothing 
stands between God and me, nothing should bind me save 
that which is my distinctive nature in harmony with the 
fact of creation; existence determined by belonging to God. 
True freedom means that I, as one who has been chosen, 
stand face to face with God as an “ individual.” But the 
same call of God ( klesis) which makes me free, binds me 
at the same time to others: the ekklesia. The ekklesia is 
not merely a community of worship, it is a perfect commu- 


168 The Christian Understanding of Man 

nity of life, communicatio omnium bonorum (Luther). 
The same love which sets me free makes me a social being. 
Thus we perceive that a really independent and a really 
social existence are actually one and the same, namely, ex¬ 
istence in love. Faith, which accepts the love of God, and 
the “ church ” as the community of those who believe, are 
correlated. All freedom is fulfilled in the “ glorious liberty 
of the children of God,” all community is fulfilled in the 
communio sanctorum. The life which is intended and 
given by God is both a completely independent life and a 
completely social life; the genuinely human element is 
freedom in union with God and my neighbor. 

(2) Individuality and Humanity. A second contrast 
which affects history is that between the universal and the 
particular. That which differentiates is so strongly empha¬ 
sized that the common element disappears. The essential 
unity of humanity is denied because the particular element 
of race or intellectual endowment seems to be more than a 
question of degree. Between barbarians and Greeks, be¬ 
tween Aryans and non-Aryans, between the genius and the 
average man, there exists — so it is said — a difference of 
species. They are different beings. On the other hand a 
rationalistic humanism lays stress upon the unity of the ra¬ 
tional nature of man to the extent of making all that is par¬ 
ticular a matter of indifference. Cosmopolitanism and ab¬ 
stract humanism are the product of rationalistic periods. 
At the present day the two opponents are wrestling with 
each other in the form of the abstract idea of a world state 
on the one hand and of the national or racial state on the 
other. Human reason is not capable of bridging this gulf. 

In the divine creation of man, however, this contrast 
does not exist. God creates each human being with his 
particular qualities, but in this one particular element he 
is simply differentiating the one human nature common 


Emil Brunner 


169 

to all. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither 
male nor female; yet the particular, distinctive qualities of 
each human being are a sign of our “ creaturely ” character; 
they also indicate that we need mutual supplementation, 
and that we can thus supplement each other. The unity 
of mankind and the distinctive character of each particular 
individual are both due to the divine creation; the mean¬ 
ing of the creation is fulfilled in one truth, namely, that 
beings who have all been created with their particular dif¬ 
ferences are made for one another. Therefore from the 
point of view of the Christian faith we accept neither ab¬ 
stract cosmopolitan humanism nor a view of race which 
denies the essential unity of all men. But the point of view 
of differentiation, of individuality, is subordinate to that 
of unity. The fact that every human being is responsible, 
that is, is called by God to be a personal being, to commun¬ 
ion with Himself and with his fellow men, is incomparably 
more important than the fact that human beings differ 
from one another in individuality, sex, nation and race. 
Every human being has been created in the image of God, 
every human being is a sinner, and everyone is called to 
faith in the gospel of reconciliation and redemption. 
Within the community of the saints, the unity which has 
been restored in Christ, the differentiation of human be¬ 
ings is treated as a matter of no significance, indeed it is 
abolished. 

(3) Spirit and Nature, Mind and Body. Those who 
hold a non-Christian anthropology are unable to under¬ 
stand man as a psycho-physical personal unity. Either they 
regard him, in an idealistic way, as essentially spirit, or in 
a naturalistic way they regard him from the point of view 
of physical existence only. The Christian understanding 
of man is equally sharply opposed to both these alternatives, 
although from the very beginning of Christian theology 


170 The Christian Understanding of Man 

idealist anthropology has had a great influence upon the 
Christian view and has done it harm. The synthesis be¬ 
tween idealism and the faith of the Scriptures comes out in 
anthropology in particular as a complete misunderstanding 
of man. For idealism the spiritual or rational existence 
of man is a participatio divinitatis, an essential participa¬ 
tion in the divine spirit or the divine reason. It has no idea 
of a personal “ over-againstness ” of the divine spirit and 
the spirit of man; instead of responsibility in love and the 
destiny for community it presupposes the metaphysical 
unity of nature. This produces its ethics of respect (recog¬ 
nition of the presence of the same reason in the other man) 
and its abstract cosmopolitan humanism. 

(4) The Evolution of Humanity. When modern writ¬ 
ers speak of a conflict between the biblical and the scientific 
views of man they are usually referring to that transforma¬ 
tion of the temporal and spatial view of the universe con¬ 
nected with the name of Darwin and the idea of evolution. 
It is true, of course, that between the traditional Christian 
view of the development of the human race and this evolu¬ 
tionary view — which, at least in its most general sense, 
came to predominate in science — there certainly was an 
impassable gulf. And yet this problem was not a real prob¬ 
lem at all; it was simply a problem which had been created 
by misunderstandings on both sides. On the side of the 
church it was caused by the failure to distinguish between 
the biblical picture of the universe, which was simply that 
of antiquity in general, and the biblical revelation of God’s 
nature and will. The Bible is not a textbook of natural 
science which tells us authoritative facts which come within 
the sphere of human research. 

The biblical revelation is certainly embedded in a view 
of the universe which in many other respects, as well as in 
that of evolution, has ceased to be of value for us at the 


Emil Brunner 


1 7 1 

present day. Just as it is impossible for us to go back to the 
days before Newton and Copernicus to the ancient concep¬ 
tion of the cosmos, so it is equally impossible for us to go 
back to the days before Lyell and Darwin to the view of 
a simultaneous divine creation of all species including man. 
That which takes place in time and space, or has taken 
place in that sphere, is, in principle, the object of research 
and not of faith. Faith does not exist in order to fill up the 
gaps in our knowledge or to compete with scientific hypoth¬ 
eses. Whatever we state about the creation of man by 
God cannot be in conflict with anything which natural sci¬ 
ence discovers as the result of careful research, because 
both statements are entirely incomparable. The Bible it¬ 
self allows for this distinction. The poet who wrote the 
one hundred thirty-ninth Psalm knows very well that the 
individual human being comes into existence as an em¬ 
bryo in its mother’s womb as the result of conception; but 
this “ natural story of creation ” does not prevent him from 
considering the same human being, who came into exist¬ 
ence in this natural way, as having been created by God. 
The divine creation is the background of the natural proc¬ 
ess of conception which can be discovered by research. It 
is true of course that the Bible did not by any means extend 
this idea to humanity as a whole; the picture of the uni¬ 
verse which was accepted at that time did not provide any 
occasion for this. But there can be nothing to prevent us 
from doing so and from saying that the story of the natu¬ 
ral development of mankind is the foreground of the same 
process whose background we call the divine creation. 

The conflict between the two arose, however, as a result 
of misunderstandings not only on the side of the church 
but also on the side of many of the representatives of sci¬ 
ence. The idea that the genesis of anything explains its 
nature is a widespread misunderstanding. To say that be- 


172 The Christian Understanding of Man 

cause man has issued from prehuman forms he is “ simply ” 
an animal, would only be legitimate if the specific nature 
of man could be explained as a mere differentiation of the 
animal element. But when we look into this question 
more closely we see that this is actually impossible; even if 
this specifically human element has been developed and 
shaped very gradually as the result of a long process of 
development, this does not mean that it is “ simply ” that 
out of which it has been shaped. 

All that is required has already been said upon this sub¬ 
ject in an earlier paper. However man may have evolved 
out of prehuman forms the fact remains that it can only 
be denied per nefas that the humanum is a distinct form 
of animal. Man alone is a responsible personal being; he 
alone knows what responsibility means; he alone is capa¬ 
ble of perceiving the Word of God. He alone has been 
created “ in the image of God ” in order that he “ may be 
like him.” It is true of course that even his particular men¬ 
tal endowments, — his power to form ideas and to be de¬ 
termined by ideas — give him a distinctive place in the 
life of the universe and single him out from all the sub¬ 
human creation; but the absolute breach between man and 
all that is not man only occurs here, at the very center: man 
alone is a person. The question whence man has gained 
this responsible personal quality — both as an individual 
and in the development of mankind as a whole — is a sec¬ 
ondary question, and it may be unanswerable. When the 
Bible speaks of man it always presupposes a human being 
who is able to assume responsibility for his own life, and 
is capable of following the message of his Creator with in¬ 
telligence. 

(5) Man in History. Far more important than the 
question of evolution — which has caused so much agita¬ 
tion — is that of history. The Word of God has no devel- 


Emil Brunner 


*73 

opment, but it has entered into history and has indeed 
become history. “ The Word became flesh,” the eternal 
Son became the Son of Man, an “ accidental fact of history,” 
just as the record of him, that of the Bible of the Old and 
the New Testament, is likewise an historical record. Thus 
the Christian faith is essentially and not merely accidentally 
an historical faith. History in contrast to natural evolu¬ 
tion is the realm of personal decision. History is the sphere 
where deeds are done, where decisions are taken. Likewise 
history — in contrast to natural development — is where 
we find not merely collectivities, such as species, races, etc., 
but personal community. Responsible personal decision 
and personal community are the constituent elements of 
the historical. In both senses Jesus Christ has not only en¬ 
tered into history but he has at the same time fulfilled and 
ended history; his coming is the fulfilment of history. 

Through the Word of God, through Jesus Christ, man is 
rightly summoned to decision, that is, to unconditional de¬ 
cision, which decides everything else. For the believer time 
is qualified irrevocably as the time of decision in which 
the final decision may be taken at any moment. Faith 
is always concerned with the whole, with eternal life and 
eternal death. Faith is the turning from death to life, just 
as Jesus Christ himself is the turning point of human his¬ 
tory, who once for all has done the decisive deed. Likewise, 
Jesus Christ is the bringer of truly personal community, of 
unconditional community. In him alone we see humanity 
gathered up into a unity, into a complete solidarity of re¬ 
sponsibility and dignity, of the guilt of sin and of redemp¬ 
tion. One who believes in him does not argue about “ de¬ 
grees of responsibility for guilt,” but he takes the guilt of 
others on his own heart as though it were his own. One 
who believes in him can no longer think about his own 
soul and his private salvation in an individualistic manner. 


174 The Christian Understanding of Man 

but his hope reaches out to the whole of humanity in the 
vision of the Kingdom of God. He who belongs to Christ 
through faith is no longer a private individual, but he is a 
member of the body of which Christ is the Head. He is 
indissolubly united with the church of the ages. 

Just as the word of God is the true self of every indi¬ 
vidual so also the divine Word is the meaning of history. 
In Jesus Christ the meaning of history has not only become 
evident, it has actually come. However, it has come only 
as that which is announced and has just begun to be real¬ 
ized, not as that which is fulfilled. The fulfilment of this 
coming is both the aim and the end of history. The goal 
and the meaning of each individual is that “ we should be 
like him the universally historical, supra-historical goal 
of humanity is that “ all should be gathered up in him ” 
into a unity of complete communion with him and with 
one another. World history, in the sense of a universal his¬ 
tory of humanity, has only been known since Jesus Christ, 
since the world has become aware of this goal towards 
which all tends. 

Even the existence of the nonbeliever has been affected 
in a new way by Jesus Christ, by the historical revelation, 
from the point of view of history as a time of decision. 
Man after Christ is not the same as man before Christ. The 
Bible itself makes a distinction between the responsibility 
of man in the “ times of ignorance ” and his responsibility 
since the advent of the Messiah; for this coming of the 
Messiah — whether man believes it or not — challenges 
him to a decision which he was not aware of before. If he 
says “ No ” to Jesus he is not an unbeliever in the way of 
the pagans who lived before Christ. This “ No ” has be¬ 
come pregnant with the quality of decision since man be¬ 
came aware of Christ; it has a new, intensified, even if 
negative personal character. This is manifested in all the 


Emil Brunner 


175 

modern “ godless ” movements. Modern man, even when 
he decides against Christ, has an understanding of personal 
existence, of freedom and of responsibility, which pre- 
Christian man did not possess. Even anti-Christianity — 
though in a negative form — contains Christ and the his¬ 
torical nature of existence. Hence its opposition to God 
has an intensity which makes all pre-Christian paganism 
and pre-Christian atheism seem quite mild in comparison. 
It is anti-Christian unbelief. 

THE NEW MAN AND THE NEW HUMANITY 

The third statement, that of the restoration of the divine 
image in man by Jesus Christ, cannot be developed within 
the framework of anthropology, but is only present within 
it as the point from which all the rest is regarded. The doc¬ 
trine of the new birth and of redemption, being the topic of 
soteriology, is the boundary of anthropology and therefore 
as such can only be suggested here. We will confine our 
observations to developing, by a retrospective glance at 
what has been said already, the truth of man as renewed in 
Jesus Christ and the renewal of humanity. 

(1) The renewal of man in Jesus Christ means first of 
all the forgiveness of sins. This implies that in the biblical 
doctrine of man the concern is always with man as a re¬ 
sponsible being. Responsibility, from the negative point 
of view, means guilt. The fact that the Bible — in contrast 
to all other forms of religion and philosophy — places for¬ 
giveness of guilt in the most central place, shows to how 
great an extent it holds that everything centers in the prob¬ 
lem of responsibility. It also shows that human existence 
is always related to the divine “ Thou.” The existence of 
man is not an independent existence, but it is what it is 
through its relation to God. Man’s attitude to God is the 
heart of his being. The renewal, the reintegration of man. 


176 The Christian Understanding of Man 

who has fallen into contradiction and therefore into ruin, 
begins with the fact that man is “ accepted in grace,” thus 
that he is once more restored to his original attitude to¬ 
ward God. With this renewal of his position the most es¬ 
sential element in personal renewal has taken place. 

(2) This renewal in the center takes place through the 
“ justification of the sinner,” through the Word of God. 
This means that in actual fact the personal existence of 
man is determined by the Word of God, so that, by the 
reception of the Word, man is a new person. It is not the 
infusion of grace but the verdict of justification, the Word 
of God graciously imparting love, which creates the new 
man. Through this Word of forgiving love, the image of 
God is again restored, which is indeed nothing other than 
existence in the Word of God, existence in the love of 
God. According to the view of the Bible, personality is 
not constituted by any formal spiritual endowment; the 
imago Dei is not to be understood in this formal sense, 
but in this material sense, which is both a relation and 
an actuality: the self-understanding of man is the self¬ 
giving Word of God. It is to be understood literally: 
“ Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word 
which proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” To fall away 
from this Word by unbelief and disobedience does not 
only affect the content of personality but personality itself; 
by this act personal life is divided. Nonexistence in the 
love of God is the loss of truly personal existence, it is im¬ 
personal personality. By justification through faith the 
right relation to God is restored and also the unity of per¬ 
sonality (peace), and likewise truly personal life, that is, 
love. 

(3) In the New Testament, however, justification is 
never represented merely as a judicial acquittal but it is 
always also a creative act of God. Since man comes into a 


Emil Brunner 


177 

new position he gains a new reality. Justification is directly 
both rebirth and sanctification. For the new position is 
not only an act of God, it is also at the same time knowl¬ 
edge and obedience, the believing obedience of man. 
Hence the Bible speaks of “ justifying faith ” as well as of 
the “ justifying Word.” The existence of man — this was 
our main thesis — is responsive actuality, the actual answer 
of man to the actual Word of God. The man who really 
receives the divine love by this very act himself becomes 
loving. “ Faith which worketh through love ” alone counts 
before God. This it is which constitutes the image of God 
in man: that his life as life in love reflects the love of God. 
“ Let us love him because he has first loved us.” The di¬ 
vine love which man gives out again to others is the reflec¬ 
tion of the primal love of God for man. 

(4) The renewal of man through Jesus Christ also 
means the renewal of humanity. As a purely individual 
process it cannot be imagined, for it means being incor¬ 
porated into the Body of Christ, the church. This shows 
clearly that we were right in conceiving the existence of 
man as person as existence in community. How could it 
be otherwise since it is indeed existence in love? Love is 
community. All that makes man truly personal makes him 
at the same time a truly social member of humanity united 
in Christ. The “ person ” and “ community ” are corre¬ 
lates; the one cannot be realized or even thought of apart 
from the other. Once again it becomes manifest how im¬ 
portant it is to define the concept of the person materially 
as existence in love. Only thus can we understand that 
the personal and the communal are one and the same. In 
the Christian church, as in the New Testament, it is espe¬ 
cially the sacrament of holy communion which expresses 
this unity: that which truly feeds me is the same as that 
which creates community. 


178 The Christian Understanding of Man 

(5) Both, however, the renewal and the realization of 
the true “ person ” and of true “ community,” can only 
be fully understood from the point of view of the goal 
of renewal. Man is not merely what he is now but that 
which he is destined to be. In sinful man destiny and exist¬ 
ence have broken asunder in the antithesis of that which 
is and that which ought to be. In justification and rec¬ 
onciliation this antithesis has been overcome in principle 
though not yet fully in reality. “ It doth not yet appear 
what we shall be.” The fact that man possesses his self 
not in himself but in Christ is known to faith but it has 
not yet been finally realized. The perfect realization of 
this God-intended self, however, is simply the realization of 
God-intended humanity. It takes place through the com¬ 
ing of Christ in power. In Jesus Christ the true self 
comes to the individual and to humanity, and is its mean¬ 
ing. Just as we await the Christ who is to come, so also we 
await the realization of our true existence, both as per¬ 
sons and in community. Can there be a stronger expres¬ 
sion of the fact that the true self of man is not in himself 
but in Jesus Christ, and therefore that it is in God? Hence 
Christian anthropology is essentially Christology; for 
Christ is our righteousness, our sanctification, and our life. 


THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MAN 


by 

Austin Farrer 











THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MAN 


Earlier essays in this book have defined Christian belief 
against several heretical positions. It might be expected 
that, the ground being thus cleared, we could now pro¬ 
ceed to a purely positive statement of the precious truth. 
But is this in fact possible to us? To define against heresy, 
as these writers have done, is a well-known task of the 
theologian; all our positive creedal statements, serene and 
timeless as they now appear, are but the crystallized de¬ 
posit of such defensive definitions in the past. When some 
heresy is in the field, we have to draw a line, and say: “ the 
Christian verity is to be found on this side, not that, of such- 
and-such a boundary.” This much theology must do: it is 
her life-and-death concern: and, whether we like it or not, 
we are bound in so far to dogmatize, because it concerns 
man’s salvation that we should. 

But when, within such necessary boundaries, the theolo¬ 
gian is called upon to state the Christian truth in positive 
terms, what is he to do? Our Lord, faced with a similar 
question out of the blue, replied: “ Thou knowest the 
commandments.” We, following that example, may be 
tempted simply to refer inquirers to the divine gospel and 
the living church. But, it will be said, surely we are not 
irrationalists: it is the business of the theologian to sys¬ 
tematize as best he can the revealed truth, in the light of 
natural knowledge. Very well: but such speculative sys¬ 
tems are tentative and private: who can venture to put his 
own forward as the Christian doctrine of man? 

We become even more alarmed about the task laid upon 

181 


182 The Christian Understanding of Man 

us, when we realize that the Christian doctrine of man is 
being laid down as the foundation on which practical con¬ 
clusions are to be built, referring to the social and political 
spheres. This doctrine, then, is to be some sort of bridge 
between the faith of the gospel and its practical application. 
Now it might very well be suspected that no such a bridge 
exists or can exist. Perhaps, after all, there is only the 
Word of God on the one hand, and on the other the 
church’s consciousness which, responding thereto, arrives 
at convictions about certain particular things which ought 
to be done. The preacher proclaims Christ: in responsi¬ 
bility towards the Christ proclaimed, and in view of the 
situation before him, the Christian man of practical vision 
sees what he thinks should be done: the Christian scholar 
adds the guidance of precedent from the church’s former 
acts: the critical theologian judges the proposed decisions 
by the standards of faith. The series is complete: nowhere 
does there intervene a constructive theologian with a the¬ 
ory of man, from which the practical decision needs to be 
deduced. 

“ Well but,” it may be protested, “ the practical and 
moral judgments of Christians are not chaotic, not un¬ 
connected by any thread of common principle. From the 
church’s moral experience generalizations can be drawn; 
and these might well be called a Christian doctrine of 
man.” They might indeed: but then they are reflective, 
and subsequent to the action which is the primary response 
to the gospel; and, being generalizations from the past, 
they share the unsatisfactoriness of all such generalizations 
— the practical light they shed on new situations is dim 
and equivocal, and those who expect from such a doctrine 
clear deductions about the desirable direction for new 
forms of state activity, will probably be disappointed. The 
only theologian who can help much there is the theologian 


Austin Farrer 183 

who feels inspired to prophesy. Let those that have it ex¬ 
ercise the gift. 

It looks as though the Christian doctrine of man will 
fall apart into two halves — a generalization from the 
Christian practical conscience: and the gospel itself viewed 
from its human end. The essay which follows will deal 
with the relations between these two doctrines of man — 
the doctrine revealed from heaven and the doctrine which 
springs from the enlightened conscience. Then, by an 
inevitable transition, we shall find ourselves led to deal 
with the relation between the conscience enlightened by 
revelation and the conscience not thus enlightened: be¬ 
tween the practical ideal for man within Christianity and 
that which is to be found outside it. 

1. WHAT IS MEANT BY A CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MAN? 

The reflections we have so far made seem to be confirmed 
when we examine the attempts of philosophers or theolo¬ 
gians to arrive at an account of man’s substance. Their 
real object, we quickly discover, is to answer the question: 
“ What ought man to be and do? ” But it seems natural to 
attempt first the apparently prior question: “ What is 
man? ” For if man be a spiritual organism so constituted 
as to perform a certain function, observe the structure of 
the organism and you will be able to infer the function’s 
nature: proceed, therefore, with your analytic exposition 
of man’s constitution. 

But when we examine the analyses that have been made, 
we find that they consist in the enumeration of “ active 
properties.” Elasticity is an active property in a ball; and 
if the ball has this property, it is capable of an elastic re¬ 
bound. But in attributing to it this property, we are 
merely attributing to it a quality x, such that it will re¬ 
bound in suitable circumstances. And our only evidence 


184 The Christian Understanding of Man 

for its doing so, and therefore for its possession of the 
quality, is the observed fact of its rebounding. 

Similarly, we may be told that man has spirit in his 
makeup. Either this means nothing relevant to our pur¬ 
pose, or it means he is capable of what are called spiritual 
activities, of which the types could be roughly enumerated. 
But we can only know this by having observed such ac¬ 
tivities in exercise; and all we shall then know is that vari¬ 
ous men in various observed degrees have shown themselves 
capable of these activities. We cannot proceed to the uni¬ 
versal “ man has spirituality,” nor even if we could to the 
conclusion “ and therefore he ought to behave thus and 
thus.” 

It appears vain, therefore, to construct a wholly invisible 
substance which all men are, in order to explain why a 
certain pattern of activities is what they ought to practise. 
Our primary certainties, if we have any, are about this 
pattern itself: we may claim that a certain configuration of 
it is good, or the good, for man, and this may be the only 
doctrine of man worth having. 

If we do make such statements, we must be assuming 
that the relation between man’s life or realized perfection 
on the one hand, and on the other his determinate sub¬ 
stantial being qua man, is certainly not fixed. He must be 
capable of various patterns of life, or it would be needless 
to inquire which is best. His pattern must be alterable; 
but no doubt there are limits to that alterability. Perhaps 
it is here that an examination of what man is, of his actual 
“ nature,” may come in: we may try by observation to 
arrive at the probable limits of his variations. And so 
we do, if we are psychologists or physiologists: we gain an 
ever increasing body of evidence as to what tunes can and 
cannot be played on the human instrument without ma¬ 
terial damage to it. 


Austin Farrer 


185 

Even this evidence is no surer or wider than the instances 
from which it has been generalized: it does not rule out the 
possibility of a fundamental change in man or in some men, 
falling completely outside its generalizations. But let us 
ignore this point, and accept the sciences as they stand. 
Still they only tell us what will not work. Among the vari¬ 
ous lives that will work — for there are many — we have 
still to make our choice, and Christian theology claims to 
be able to assist us. 

Theology can but point to the data of revelation; but 
these, whatever it is that they give us, do not supply a 
system of ethics and sociology, nor yet do they give us a 
doctrine of man’s substantial composition, from which 
these things could be deduced. 

It is true, no doubt, that Scripture gives some account of 
man’s substance in terms of body, soul, spirit and other 
such conceptions. This language is primitive, inadequate 
and confused. The Scripture was not given to teach us 
psychology. One need not deny that such terminology 
was accurate enough for the purposes of Scripture, that is, 
for referring to the human pole of the relation with God 
which God brings about. But that only shows how com¬ 
pletely Scripture is concerned with the relation, and how 
little with the human pole considered apart from the 
relation. If the terminology has any merit, it is the merit 
of infancy as compared with maturity. Maturity in be¬ 
coming determinate and effective excludes many possibili¬ 
ties that still seemed to lie open to childhood. So human 
thought in becoming mature becomes accurate indeed and 
systematic, but narrowed by its very definiteness; and a 
glance back to the childhood of the human mind may 
convey to us vague and undifferentiated suggestions of a 
wider truth than can be expressed in our current philoso¬ 
phy or science. That might mean for us the reform of our 


186 The Christian Understanding of Man 

present conceptions, certainly not a return to their primi¬ 
tive counterparts. 

Revelation, then, does not set out to answer for us the 
question “ What is man? ” but to tell us how God made 
him but little lower than the angels, how he regards and 
visits him, and crowns him with glory and honor. Here 
we have primarily acts of God, but no doubt secondarily 
activities also of man in response thereto. Since these ac¬ 
tivities of man are the appropriate responses to the objects 
set to him by God’s acts, they make up what is the true 
pattern of man’s life according to the Christian revelation, 
and to know this pattern would be to know, if not a Chris¬ 
tian doctrine of man, at least the Christian doctrine for 
man. We may indeed study the pattern direct, in the lives 
of those who have worthily pursued the God-given objects, 
but even so, the objects were determinant for them and the 
primary matter of revelation. For piety, in a Christian 
view, is just whatever a man does in conforming himself 
to the self-revealed God, and to infer the revelation from 
the response is in the strictest sense preposterous. 

This is not of course to say that we begin with the re¬ 
vealed knowledge of what God is, simply in himself. Of 
such knowledge we are not capable recipients. What is 
revealed is his actions, and himself only as the agent of 
them; and what he does is to create, call, redeem, promise, 
that is, to determine our existence and not his own. And 
yet these determinations do not reveal to us what we are, 
but give us the objects we must pursue. 

It would not do to say that the relations of man with 
God which revelation displays are simply external to man, 
as they are external to God. The relations which come 
into existence between the creature and the Creator do 
not affect the Creator’s being: the creature’s they not only 
affect but effect, since both our nature and our existence 


Austin Farrer 


187 

are pure effects of his will. That is true of the order of 
being; but in the order of knowing it is otherwise. As 
knowers, we begin by taking ourselves for granted. Then 
we learn, in this case from revelation, the relations in 
which we stand to our environment — in this case, our su¬ 
pernatural environment which is God himself: and next, 
the claims that this environment has upon our activity. 
And so revelation is primarily of God’s acts and the rela¬ 
tions to him which they create for us; and it is through 
the knowledge of these things that we come to the knowl¬ 
edge of the sort of life we ought to live in response to 
them, and so to the Christian doctrine of man. 

2. HOW THE RELATIONS OF MAN TO GOD MAKE POSSIBLE 
THE IDEA OF A DOCTRINE OF MAN 

We can only attempt to show here how the very notion 
of a true nature of man, which he ought to and in some 
cases is destined to realize, is, for the Christian, bound up 
with those relations to God in which revelation sets him. 
Of these relations we may specify: 

(1) Man’s relation to God as his Creator and Sustainer. 

(2) His relation to the end intended by the Creator. 

(3) The correspondence or noncorrespondence of his 
present course with the steps divinely intended to lead him 
to that end. 

(4) His relation to the gracious intervention of God 
which is to restore that correspondence when lost. 

To the Christian it appears that the very conception 
of a true or natural pattern for human existence depends 
on the first two of these relations. If we take man apart 
from God, why suppose one end or goal for mankind at 
all? Men are many, and they are various. It is true that 
they have, in general outline, the same biological basis, 
being of one animal species. But there seems no reason 


188 The Christian Understanding of Man 

why they should not go as many ways as their common 
species allows them to go, or as their herd instincts allow 
them to desire. But if what appears to phenomenal ob¬ 
servation as the evolution of man is in its reality the cre¬ 
ative act of God, then a Maker may have a purpose, and 
a Maker of many a common purpose for all, and this 
“ idea ” subsisting in the divine intention is the true ex¬ 
emplar of the true doctrine of man — that is, indeed, where 
the true nature of man truly is, and only secondarily in 
anything that man may be observed to be, or to be tending 
toward, or aspiring after in fact. 

It is this intention of man’s Creator that imposes on him 
an absolute obligation — that of acting in correspondence 
with it; and failure to correspond makes his state one of 
sin. How great the lack of correspondence, and how com¬ 
plete the inability of man to recover it, is known by reve¬ 
lation alone; and that revelation takes the form of the di¬ 
vine intervention itself which recovers it to him. For it 
was in the act of God’s recovering man that man saw how 
low he had fallen. The revelation of a depth implies the 
revelation of a height, and both were revealed by the act 
which lifted man from the one to the other. 

If it is true that the first two relations specified above 
give us the bare possibility of conceiving a true and unitary 
“ nature ” for men, it is the second two which afford the 
possibility of filling that conception with any content. 
Words about our final consummation or true end would 
bear no sense, unless they bore analogy to present experi¬ 
ence. And so the actual reception of grace, as being a 
foretaste of our end, is our key to the conception of it. 
If our end is to attain unto God, then the entry of God into 
the world in Christ, and our being by the Spirit enabled 
to know him there, is the actual revelation of our end: 
and it is from our end that we know our true “ nature.” 


Austin Farrer 


189 

By our redemption we are already in some measure in 
reception of God; and, therefore, able to attach some sense 
to the teaching that promises us an increase both of our 
capacity to receive and of its satisfaction up to such a point, 
that any further increase would destroy our determinate 
nature as creatures of a certain kind. 

The notion of such a fixed point might suggest an arbi¬ 
trary limit, as though we might be destined to fret for all 
eternity against a barrier we may not pass. There is no 
need to think anything of the kind. If we are to receive 
God up to the limit of our capacity, and that capacity finds 
its measure in our very nature as men, then we should pre¬ 
sumably feel no barrier, for who can feel a barrier in the 
absolute fulfilment of himself? To desire more would be 
to desire extinction, by absorption into the very being of 
God himself. Absorption is a misleading word; it suggests 
that something remains of what is absorbed. But God 
realizes in himself the full possibilities of the divine na¬ 
ture: there is no room for more gods but one, or in the one 
for any addition; and the deification of the creature is 
exactly its annihilation. By this path also, then, we are 
led back to the same point — that the Christian doctrine 
of man’s end and consummation itself implies that the 
Creator has assigned to man a determinate nature, which 
can be perfectly fulfilled, but not passed beyond. 

That does not mean that the present pattern of our 
nature is eternally unalterable; for who can determine 
exactly which aspects of manhood as we know it belong 
to the conditions of its ultimate perfectibility and which 
to the state of earthly existence? Grace, then, may per¬ 
form upon us marvels that we cannot conceive; but still 
in perfecting, not superseding, our nature; a nature which 
is a datum for grace and imposes a measure on what grace 
may effect: just what measure we cannot know. 


190 The Christian Understanding of Man 

Our ignorance is not removed by the revelation of God 
in Christ. There indeed we see divine perfection meas¬ 
ured or limited by the capacity of human nature, yet not of 
the nature we shall ultimately be, but only of the possibili¬ 
ties of its perfection under the conditions of this life. To 
know the other we should have to have direct knowledge of 
Christ in glory, which we have not, so far as regards his 
manner of being. We have some knowledge of him in the 
days of his flesh; and there we see him clothed in certain 
elements of our nature as we know it here; which we as¬ 
sume, therefore, to belong at least to the raw material of 
our perfection, and not to the dross of perversions which 
grace will simply purge away. 

If in the Man Christ Jesus we have a man in perfect 
response to the acts of God through which we are related 
to him, then in the same Christ we have in actual and 
perfect expression the human pole of the relation between 
God and man, as redemption restores it under the con¬ 
ditions of our present life; and to know this would be to 
know the Christian doctrine of man in the only way pos¬ 
sible to us here. 

3. THE STATUS OF NON-CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES ABOUT MAN 

We have so far attempted to show that while it is not 
possible to begin with the knowledge of a human sub¬ 
stance simply given, it is possible to conceive a true nature 
of man — true with the truth of correspondence to a di¬ 
vine exemplar, as artistic expression can be true in corre¬ 
sponding to the artist’s thought. We have hoped to show 
the possibility of such a conception within the framework 
of Christian revelation. We proceed to consider whether 
there can be any conception of it outside that framework; 
and if so, what it is that revelation adds to a knowledge 
obtainable without it. 

To maintain that apart from the one revelation there 


Austin Farrer 


191 

is no conception of man’s nature or pattern of life, is noth¬ 
ing more nor less than an attempt to silence good evidence 
by hard swearing; though some appear not to have shrunk 
from it. It is evident that all philosophies, religions or 
views of the world, excluding those that are purely skep¬ 
tical and including most that pretend to be so, have some¬ 
thing to say about the true type of human life. It is equally 
plain that the subject matter about which they try to speak 
is the same as that about which the Christian doctrine does 
speak; and that while all are, by the Christian standard, 
more or less wrong, all are more or less right as well. 

That is the evidence, and our difficulties do not begin 
till we launch into dogmatic explanations of it — which 
admittedly we are bound to try to find. Could we say, for 
example, that before revelation a certain area of the ra¬ 
tional conscience was indefectible and uncorrupt, a certain 
set of moral propositions clear, while those other truths re¬ 
mained in the dark which revelation was later given to il¬ 
luminate? Such a suggestion remains plausible only so 
long as we abstain from trying to enumerate these truths of 
reason. 

If, then, we cannot maintain in this sense a residual 
but reliable reason left over by the “ fall,” are we to go 
into the other camp and assert “ total depravity ”? That 
depends on what we mean by “ total depravity.” If we 
are adopting an eschatological view, and taking our stand 
at the final consummation of the world, then no doubt 
it is proper to say that everything in the world is totally 
depraved, if it is turned so crooked as not to be following 
a line which will bring it to its God-intended consumma¬ 
tion. If a creature is so behaving as to lead to its becoming 
a final and total loss, then there is good sense in saying that 
it is totally off the right line. 

If, on the other hand, we consider any creature as it is 
at any moment of its progress toward its end, however 


192 The Christian Understanding of Man 

lamentable that end is to be, and ask what it now is in 
itself; then to say that it has no correspondence of any 
kind with the nature intended by its Creator does not 
make sense. So long as a creature continues to exist, its 
existence cannot fall wholly outside the nature intended 
by its Creator: that is the charter of its being, and by pass¬ 
ing outside its terms, it would either cease to exist or be¬ 
come something else. Human nature totally depraved in 
this sense would be totally denatured and dehumanized. 
We might accept that description of the totally insane so 
far as their life is manifested to us; but hardly of mankind 
as a whole before revelation. 

Corruption is a real and terrible thing; but it is distrib¬ 
uted partially over man’s whole moral nature, and is not 
the total extinction of any particular elements in it. There 
is only one thing that is definitely and simply “ lost ” — 
a sure true and objective vision of God. That vision, and 
the relation to God founded upon it, may well be the very 
head in the body or organism of man’s spiritual nature, the 
very keystone to the arch. But this head being lost, the 
members do not simply mortify and perish: if they did, 
there would be nothing left for redemption to redeem. 
They have a certain vitality which causes them to struggle 
against their own corruption: not, we may well say, with 
such success that they ever unaided shake it off, or attain a 
mastery which is the earnest of final victory and final perse¬ 
verance; yet vigorously enough to maintain their own ex¬ 
istence, to be still holding out when grace comes to give the 
triumph they cannot themselves attain. 

But in nature’s unaided struggle, it is absurd to draw 
lines she cannot, in this and that instance, overpass. There 
is no specific human virtue or social attitude of which we 
could dare to say that it is not to be found in those un- 


Austin Farrer 


193 

touched by the Christian dispensation. In perfection, no 
doubt not: but we might look in vain for that among the 
elect who have not perfection but only the earnest of it. 
And even their having that is a matter of faith. 

Man, then, apart from revelation and grace, is still 
man, and the creature of God; and though corrupt in his 
spiritual nature to an undefinable extent, still has, as is 
evident, the power of reflecting on his true nature and ob¬ 
taining some impression of the pattern of it intended by 
God. He may not even be aware that God is, but that does 
not prevent his having some sense of a goal set before him, 
because man as a spiritual being is essentially an aspirant, 
and an aspirant must have an object of his aspiration; so 
that in being aware of himself in any wise, man is aware, 
however confusedly, of a pattern of true nature; and, once 
again, we can draw no line that his unaided moral reflec¬ 
tion is incapable of passing. There is no single moral con¬ 
viction that nature may not arrive at for herself, so long 
as we are speaking of man’s ideal for his own life on earth, 
or for his relations with his neighbor. 

In saying this, we are not going back on our original 
denial that man has a substantial being which can be ob¬ 
jectively defined in such a way that his true end could be 
inferred from it. What the pagan philosopher does is not 
this at all, even if it is what he thinks he is doing. He 
is, in fact, becoming vaguely aware — sub quadam confu- 
sione, says St. Thomas — of the exemplar which is actually 
in the divine mind, and nowhere else. The persistence of 
man’s moral nature even under corruption means the per¬ 
sistence of actual aspiration towards the divinely appointed 
end, and that implies a certain vision of that end, however 
confused, and however dissociated from all ideas of the¬ 
ology. It is sufficient here to state the fact, without asking 


194 The Christian Understanding of Man 

through what channels this confused conception of the 
divine purpose reaches the “ natural reason.” 

We will pause to refute a heresy, partly because it is 
pernicious, partly because the refutation of it will cast fur¬ 
ther light on the relation between revelation and “ natural 
reason.” This heresy attempts to prove, in the teeth of 
all evidence, that certain vital spiritual attitudes and con¬ 
victions about the human side of human life are impossible 
without faith in revelation, or at least in God. 

The heretical argument builds on the propositions as¬ 
serted above, that a right conscious relation to God is the 
keystone to the structure of human life, or head to its or¬ 
ganism. For in an existence ordered toward God, the vari¬ 
ous elements belonging to the true pattern of our life are 
seen to find their reasonable and organic place, and to 
cooperate harmoniously in subserving the one supreme 
end. Remove the governing principle and the harmony 
and completeness to which Christian eyes are accustomed 
will no longer be found. But the now headless members of 
our moral nature — the various elements of interest, desire 
and aspiration, social or self-regarding — are unwilling to 
fall into complete dissociation and dissolution. Having 
lost their king, they elect a president, and tend to reunite 
themselves under some makeshift principle or another, 
when they find themselves deprived of their proper head; 
and so arise various philosophies, whether formulated or 
unconscious. 

The Christian dialectician takes these various substitute 
highest principles of action. One may be self-realization, 
another the good of the totality of mankind; another the 
attainment of a certain list of “ values.” About all these 
he proceeds to demonstrate that they are inadequate for 
the role they have undertaken. Treat any one of them as 
your supreme motive, and it becomes impossible to regard 


Austin Farrer 


195 

some one or other of the Christian virtues — it may be 
absolute chastity, it may be true neighborly love — as 
means that you would naturally adopt in order to compass 
that end. Either the end fails to provide a place for the 
Christian virtue at all, or else, in adopting it, more or less 
seriously distorts it. 

The Christian dialectician may further claim to show 
that even though you may have true neighborly love as 
derived not from your false first principle of action, but 
from some independent source — e.g., from the example of 
Christians — then still the false first principle, if it has any 
serious influence on your thoughts and acts, is bound to 
cramp its exercise. If you really treat the friendship you 
show to your neighbor as means to your own self-realization 
or as a contribution to the well-being of an abstract totality 
called mankind or the state, the quality of your neighborli¬ 
ness will not remain unimpaired. 

All this may very well be true; but it is at the next step 
in the argument that error arises: when the theologian goes 
on to draw the conclusion that so long as you have the 
false first principle, you cannot exhibit true neighborly 
love at all, nor possess the notion of it, nor admit the claim 
of it. This conclusion is false. The only true conclusion 
would be: “You cannot logically, so long as you pretend 
that all your morality is to be deduced from your false first 
principle.” But even if men do seriously pretend this, how 
many of them are logical in its practical application? It is 
very unplausible to maintain that men are so single-minded 
and logical in their aims: all are in practice pluralists to a 
greater or less extent, and follow many uncoordinated val¬ 
ues; and, therefore, though the possession of a false first 
principle and the loss of the true may make impossible the 
realization of the full true pattern of human nature in the 
ordered kingdom of ends, it remains possible for any single 


i g6 The Christian Understanding of Man 

human virtue or worthy aim to flourish illogically under 
the makeshift republic. 

If men who have lost a true conscious relation with God 
could not patch together the consequent disunion of their 
aims and of their life with some sort of substitute general 
principle, their minds would fall into extreme disorder. 
But equally, if they could not set up such a patched unity 
without the substitute first principle’s imposing an abso¬ 
lute dictatorship and Gleichschaltung upon all the ele¬ 
ments it patches together, men would become completely 
dehumanized. We see the process going a good way in 
certain fanatics: but if it goes all the way, the man is mad. 
In the ordinary case, it is the essence of the situation that 
the patch remains a patch, and so in more or less dishar¬ 
mony with what it patches. Only the true first principle 
can be anything else. And this no doubt is the reason for 
the world’s profound suspicion of philosophy whenever it 
proposes to take itself too seriously: and a similar suspicion 
of Christianity, with those who do not know what it is. If 
one gave God an inch, he might so easily take an ell! 

But, it is said, apart from the love of God we have at 
least one purely human disability: we cannot love human¬ 
ity. No: but then the love of humanity is not a human 
possibility at all, because humanity is nothing but an idea 
in the mind of God, and we can only love the idea by lov¬ 
ing the mind, and desiring the fulfilment of that mind’s 
purposes. Otherwise, humanity is merely a general de¬ 
scription of such men as we may be in direct and indirect 
relations with, and to love humanity can only mean to en¬ 
tertain the resolve to take up a friendly attitude to any 
men we may have to do with from time to time. 

The paragraphs which have preceded might be welcome 
to a humanist as a plea on behalf of natural goodness: a 
suggestion that man is not so very bad after all, and in 


Austin Farrer 


*97 

need of supernatural grace only to add the last touches 
to his perfection. Any such interpretation must be far 
from the mind of the Christian theologian. Our object has 
been merely to show that what corruption fastens on is 
human goodness. A parasite cannot be parasitic on noth¬ 
ing, nor can corruption prey upon itself. But the terrible 
nature of the disease is only heightened by the worth of 
what it undermines and will at length destroy. A stinking 
fungus in the woods may be offensive to sense; but to the 
mind it is infinitely less distressing than a cancer in the 
human throat. 

From the point of view also of our responsibility for evil 
— a topic on which we shall later have more to say — the 
same thing appears. The shining excellences that are in 
mankind themselves create the blackness of a sin which 
can turn from a realized spiritual beauty to feed on gar¬ 
bage. Every such act is guilt which cannot be weighed, 
much less atoned, by man. Had his present condition 
simply dropped to that of some baser creature, then what¬ 
ever the guilt of his ancestors, his own would be small. 
The type of sin is not the serpent considered according 
to its natural kind, but the rebellious angel who chose to 
crawl in the dust. 

It is in this spirit that we have maintained the roots 
of all the human virtues to be in natural man. And it is 
nonetheless only by supernatural aid that they can at last 
be saved alive, not to say brought to perfection. 

4. WHENCE THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN 
DOCTRINE OF MAN IS DERIVED 

There might at first sight appear to be a contradiction 
between the last two sections of this essay. In the former 
(2) the very idea of a doctrine of man was said to spring 
from that of the relations in which man stands to God. In 


ig8 The Christian Understanding of Man 

the latter (3) men, quite unaware of any relation to God, 
were admitted to have some sound notions about the true 
nature of man. Now we did attempt to cover this contra¬ 
diction by the statement that the unbeliever is actually ap¬ 
prehending the effect of a divine relation without realizing 
it. But this naturally suggests the rejoinder: “ But can¬ 
not the Christian do the same? When the Christian sees 
some aspect of the good for man, does he necessarily see 
it as the consequence of a relation to God? ” 

We must answer that it is obvious that the Christian’s 
conscience can function without the awareness of theologi¬ 
cal principles just as anyone else’s can. It is only on philo¬ 
sophical reflection that the very notion of a “ true good for 
man ” hangs upon theology. The particular content of 
that notion may be given not by awareness that man is 
made in God’s image, but by the functioning of that image 
in man. 

The Christian’s human virtues are not all dictated from 
heaven, nor are they inferred by mere hard reasoning as 
logical consequences from the relations in which he learns 
himself to stand toward God. They are not a mere con¬ 
formity to principles imposed by his theology, but spring 
naturally in his human consciousness as faith toward God 
completes the pattern of his nature. They are natural and 
not supernatural to him: but in order to attain their proper 
perfection they need their true setting, and that setting is 
itself partly supernatural, being in this aspect nothing else 
but those relations to God of which we have spoken. This 
setting being given, nature has her true efflorescence, like 
a plant that has obtained soil, sunlight and air. 

This does not mean that it is impossible to enforce the 
detail of ethics by theological considerations. For all these 
parts of the pattern once it is finished, both the super¬ 
natural setting and the microcosm of nature, are inter- 


Austin Farrer 


199 

related in a true order, in which the various elements are 
felt to imply one another; so that men can be told to love 
as brethren because they have one Father, or to purify 
themselves even as he is pure. But it remains true all the 
same that human duties are duties because they are hu¬ 
man; because God created man that he might realize his 
manhood; and what that is, is known to the Christian by 
redeemed nature’s own response to God: doubtless not the 
nature of the isolated individual alone, but human nature 
all the same. 

This matter is somewhat complicated by the fact that 
Christians have in the life and ethical maxims of Christ a 
standard of the truly human; and it is a usual way of speak¬ 
ing to call this standard a matter of revelation; which in a 
sense, no doubt, it is. But if we carry consideration a step 
further back, we shall say that the humanity of Christ, in 
human activities and relations, is itself human nature per¬ 
fectly actualized in its true setting, that of absolute right¬ 
ness of relation toward God. And so what happens in him 
is what happens, however imperfectly, in believers. 

We have attempted to reconcile these two propositions: 
“ The Christian doctrine of man is just the human con¬ 
science come fully to itself,” and “ The Christian doctrine 
of man essentially presupposes the Christian revelation of 
God in Christ.” And this coming to itself of the human 
conscience we take to include the stabilizing of it. But 
now how far is this stabilization a fact? No doubt there 
is more agreement between Christians who claim to obey 
the authority of the once-given revelation, than there is 
in the rest of mankind beside. But there is disagreement 
also: and that is not hard to explain. 

In the Christ of the Gospels we believe that the true 
self-awareness of humanity is found pure. There is the 
true man truly responding to the true God with true hu- 


200 The Christian Understanding of Man 

manity. But Christ’s acts and words do not give us a 
complete guide to life, and what they do give us may be 
misinterpreted in being applied to new circumstances: nor 
can any mere logical accuracy eliminate such misinterpre¬ 
tation. An element of fresh spiritual judgment is involved 
and our judgment may be impure. 

Both for interpretation, therefore, and for supplementa¬ 
tion we are forced to call in the Christian consciousness 
outside our Lord, a consciousness liable to an indetermin¬ 
able degree of perversion and error, and yet the best that 
we have. We shall look for it where we suppose it to be 
purest or most surely guided. To raise the question as to 
where that is would be to compare the claims of churches 
to their authority, and of saints to their aureoles. This is 
not the place to do it, nor is it the place to discuss how 
much weight is to be attached to precedent, even the best, 
or how far the individual has to make new decisions for 
himself in responsibility toward God. It will be sufficient 
to state that everyone respects some authority in practice; 
or if not, then he must deny any expressible Christian 
doctrine of man at all. 

5. THE CONTENT OF THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MAN 

From what precedes it must follow that the content of 
the Christian doctrine of man is the whole deliverance of 
the true Christian conscience, in unity with our Lord’s, con¬ 
cerning the good for man in this life. To attempt an ex¬ 
pression of this would be to attempt a complete system of 
ethics. We can here go no further than the most bare gen¬ 
eralization and arid platitudes, mentioning only these prin¬ 
ciples — the hierarchy and balance of activities, sociality, 
liberty and spirituality. 

Quite apart from all questions of duty to his neighbor, 
the Christian sets certain activities before others: other 


Austin Farrer 


201 


things being equal, feeding should yield to philosophy and 
pushpin to poetry. But this principle of hierarchy does 
not exclude the principle of balance. There is a time for 
philosophizing, but a time also to refrain from philosophy, 
and some kind of balance is to be observed, though only 
in broad principle. It is absurd to think one can write a 
prescription for the employment of everyman’s leisure, or 
demand that every example of homo sapiens should be an 
example of homo rotundus , that mythical species, the all¬ 
round man. Yet however absurd we become in attempting 
too much exactness in their application, the principles of 
hierarchy and balance of activities are perfectly binding as 
far as they go, and form a man’s absolute duty, so far as 
that duty can be considered apart from duty to his neigh¬ 
bor. 

The preservation of such balance and order requires 
discipline, not merely the resolute choice of the right ac¬ 
tivity when the inappropriate one is bewitching, but the 
systematic hardening of oneself in habits conducive to right 
choices. For we are creatures of habit, and cannot trust 
habits to look entirely after themselves. 

In his respect for these things, the Christian need be in 
no way singular. Although it is unlikely that his hierarchy 
and system of activities will correspond exactly with that 
of the non-Christian in detail, the non-Christian may rec¬ 
ognize these principles in general, and have many details 
too in common with him, and be as absolute in his sense 
of duty. 

But now there are certain activities which will be pe¬ 
culiar to the Christian. For his conscious response to God, 
in acts of understanding and love, is not indeed itself hu¬ 
man activity, nor subject matter of ethics, but demands 
and uses human activities none the less. These religious 
practices will have their place in the scheme of life, and 


202 The Christian Understanding of Man 

will carry with them further and peculiar developments of 
self-discipline. For now this is valued not merely for the 
formation of useful habit, but for creating the state of life 
conducive to the contemplation of God. 

But once again, religious practice and the religious dis¬ 
cipline that goes with it are not peculiar to the Christian 
alone: other followers of other religions know them. Yet 
here we have something in which the Christian is more 
directly determined in his conduct by revealed truth — 
religious practice does not spring simply in the human con¬ 
science, but is a direct opening of oneself to God accord¬ 
ing as one believes in him. As the beliefs differ, so will 
the practices and the estimation in which they are held, 
and it is the less to be expected that the Christian will 
coincide with others in this field. The source and value of 
non-Christian religious ideas is a question which we must 
refuse to consider here. 

It is odd that the duties of sociality should have been 
sometimes treated as the chief matter of the Christian reve¬ 
lation. Sociality is part of the true nature of man as man, 
and so recognized by the most considerable non-Christian 
thinkers. It is part of what we are from the start, it is a 
datum for grace when it comes, and lays down lines along 
which grace will have to proceed if its action is not to de¬ 
humanize us. The plurality of men belongs as much to 
our existence as the unity of God does to his, and the end 
of man must be a social one. That this involves the ab¬ 
solute and universal obligation of justice and loving-kind¬ 
ness is a possible piece of moral knowledge apart from reve¬ 
lation, however much it may be stabilized and enforced by 
the theological consideration that other men are as much 
objects for God as we ourselves, so that to love him means 
to adopt his purpose for them. 

Justice means impartiality in all men’s minds, and 


Austin Farrer 


203 

loving-kindness means wishing them well and giving them 
friendly assistance in the defense and attainment of their 
good. There is much more agreement about these defini¬ 
tions than there is about the goods that we have to be 
impartial in allotting if we are to be just, and that we have 
to wish and strive to obtain for others if we are to be lov¬ 
ing. Thus while two of us may coincide exactly in our 
definitions of these great social virtues, our views of their 
practical application may be poles asunder, in so far as 
we differ in our estimation of the goods to be distributed 
by justice or sought by loving-kindness. So the practical 
meaning of our social morality will depend on our individ¬ 
ual morality — on our opinion about the hierarchy and 
balance of activities, but also on our belief in supernatural 
goods, which though they do not form the subject matter 
of this essay, cannot be excluded here. The Christian in 
wishing well to his brother and acting on his wish, will 
desire for him a right relation with God in response to 
divine grace, expressed in contemplation as well as obedi¬ 
ence, and supported by a self-discipline conducive thereto. 

It is in its content, then, rather than in its form that 
Christian altruism is peculiar: the Christian is not singular 
in exercising sympathy, but in sympathizing with his neigh¬ 
bor’s position as a soul living in the sight of God. If loving¬ 
kindness is to be defined as sympathetic cooperation with 
others in the attainment of whatever aims they happen to 
adopt, then the Christian must be confessed to be not more, 
but less, loving than other men. True, he has sympathy for 
error, or rather for the man that has fallen into it, but to 
support him in the recovery of the right path, and not in 
the attainment of his erroneously chosen goal. 

This aspect of the Christian’s social conscience gives a 
peculiar turn to his version of the principle of liberty, 
the third of those we proposed to consider. That principle 


204 The Christian Understanding of Man 

is not a Christian monopoly. It may be stated in the form, 
that men’s attainment of their good must come through 
the exercise of their own choice and will. But now the 
Christian, together with some other moralists, will have a 
particular temptation to interfere with the liberty of oth¬ 
ers, because he thinks it important that they should pursue 
the right goods and not the wrong. This may lead him to 
adopt the line of conduct which has been euphemistically 
but nonsensically described as “ forcing them to be free,” 
i.e., driving them into the right channels of endeavor. 

But then on the other hand he has an equally strong 
interest in leaving them to act for themselves, since the 
chief of those “ right goods ” that he wishes for them is a 
right standing in the presence of God, and that can only 
consist of a right attitude of the autonomous will. Our 
wills are ours to make them God’s, and it cannot be done 
by proxy. 

The Christian’s respect for liberty, then, will be some¬ 
thing of his own. He will appear to others to be inclined 
to unwarranted interference; but he will claim that his 
so-called interference is intended to create the very con¬ 
dition of the true exercise of liberty. For liberty is the 
voluntary choice of the good. But the good cannot be 
chosen unless it has been seen. The interference of the 
Christian, then, will consist in that effective presentation 
of the good which makes possible for another the choice 
of it. 

Needless to say that, other things being equal, the Chris¬ 
tian sympathizes and cooperates with his neighbor in the 
attainment of immediate and natural desires, and that the 
obligation to do so is absolute. 

Under the last head, spirituality, comes the problem sug¬ 
gested by an earlier section of this essay, when we touched 
on the subject of the bounds set by our earthly condition 


Austin Farrer 


205 

to the progress of our nature, under the impulse of grace, 
toward its ultimate perfection. What, in fact, are these 
bounds? Ought we to push them back as far as possible, 
and follow the Aristotelian maxim, which bids us live the 
life of immortals even here, as far as in us lies? Since 
certain things, for example, in Christ’s words, marrying 
and giving in marriage, and every pleasure of sense, seem 
to belong to our present condition rather than to our ulti¬ 
mate perfectibility, can we anticipate paradise by mortify¬ 
ing them? 

This question is partly a practical one — how far can it 
be done, without cutting our life off from the roots of its 
natural energy, and so frustrating our object by starving 
the higher activities themselves? To mortify the “ body 
of flesh ” is not to enter into immediate possession of the 
resurrection-body: we cannot hope to live in the flesh and 
out of the flesh at the same time. But partly too it is a 
social question — how far can it in fact be done without 
irresponsibility toward the rest of mankind, from whom 
we are not free to dissociate ourselves? 

The answer then depends on practical considerations, 
and has been solved for the few by the admission of a social 
and regulated monasticism as a specialized function of so¬ 
ciety in general, which those who are called into this life 
help more in this way than they would in any other. For 
the many, infinite varieties and degrees in other-worldliness 
have to be recommended according to the vocation and op¬ 
portunity of each. 

Our conclusion is, that the Christian doctrine of the 
good for man is no more than a pure and stabilized form 
of the human conscience about it. This is so, in so far as 
human goods and relationships are concerned. But those 
supernatural goods which Christianity adds are no mere 
addition, nor merely the cause of the purity and stability 


206 The Christian Understanding of Man 

of the Christian’s view of the rest. For the life of man’s 
spirit is not an agglomerate but an organism, and of that 
organism we have called his conscious relation with God 
the head. The whole is more than the sum of its parts, 
and the natural goods become transmuted in entering into 
the supernatural good by becoming the field of man’s serv¬ 
ice to God. For the Christian there can be no mere moral¬ 
ity. His moral judgments may agree with other men’s 
but his obedience to them is obedience to God, and a means 
of appropriating the supreme good. 

6. THE FREEDOM OF MAN AND THE IMAGE OF GOD 

We have said something about man’s nature in its rela¬ 
tion to God: and something about its content in itself. We 
must turn to man’s nature in its relation to man. For the 
paradox of human existence is that man becomes an object 
to himself: he is concerned with realizing what he is: this is 
the mystery of the will. 

Man’s nature has appeared in the double role of goal 
and limit to his aspiration. It is a certain measure of the 
divine perfection, and, therefore, the object of his striving: 
but again it is only a certain measure of it, and, there¬ 
fore, a limit to his pursuit of perfection itself. But neither 
a goal nor a limit to aspiration would have any meaning 
unless man were an aspirant and, therefore, a free crea¬ 
ture: if he had not a power to aspire after his end and to 
conform his actions to his aspirations. 

That man’s will is free — that it is a will, in fact, and 
not something else — is certainly Christian doctrine, how¬ 
ever many views have been taken by Christians about the 
scope of his freedom: and it seems best here not to attempt 
to take sides with any school, but rather to express the 
minimum doctrine of human liberty which must be held 
if our religion is to make sense. 


Austin Farrer 


207 

We need not assert, then, an arbitrary freedom of choice 
— that man is able to will anything that could ever come 
into his head. But we must assert the freedom of effort. 
Let it be granted that a man can recognize an aspiration 
as the highest he has — either the highest absolutely, or 
the highest that applies to these or those given circum¬ 
stances with which he is today confronted. He can rec¬ 
ognize it, but only if he makes the effort of sincere reflec¬ 
tion. He may or may not make that effort: here lies his 
freedom. But again, when he has recognized it, he may or 
may not make the effort required to bring his action into 
line with his aspiration: and here is freedom again. 

It does not seem necessary to assert that a man could 
always have reflected honestly or acted virtuously on each 
given occasion. Past failures may have incapacitated him; 
there may be impediments in the physical or psychic con¬ 
stitution he has inherited. It is enough to assert that he 
has some freedom, however narrow its scope; for then there 
is something to which the moralist can address himself, 
and some field in which the will can be exercised. 

Christians are not singular in the assertion of free will: 
it is really acknowledged, though often with much confu¬ 
sion, by most religious and moral systems. It does not re¬ 
quire Christian faith to bring the acknowledgment of ab¬ 
solute obligation to use all the liberty one has in the pursuit 
of his best aspirations. Nor need the non-Christian’s sanc¬ 
tion be a selfish one. The atheist may ask no other motive 
than the duty of bringing good into existence, whether that 
good consists of his own activities and states, or those of 
others, or material conditions productive of these. 

The success of a man in actually following his best as¬ 
piration depends upon two factors: first, the clarity, force 
and unity with which the object of aspiration presents itself 
to his mind: and second, the effort he actually makes in 


208 The Christian Understanding of Man 

concentrating attention and activity upon it. No man will 
be a hero in the service of an ideal he has but faintly seen, 
nor in that of the most luminous vision, if his will power is 
slight. 

On both accounts the Christian claims supreme advan¬ 
tage. First, the object of aspiration is not a mere multitude 
of particular human goods, but the will of the Creator, 
the one highest good, so far as that can be imparted, and 
is imparted, to the created universe; an object, therefore, 
which has a natural power to move the will out of all pro¬ 
portion to any other. And it is the very work of revela¬ 
tion to make this object effectively known to man, that is, 
in such fashion as to command his desire. Second, the 
Christian hopes to have received in the grace of the Holy 
Spirit a power to conform his act to this supreme aspiration. 

Kant thought that if I am to recognize the highest good 
as highest, when presented to me by revelation, I must 
already have the pattern of it in my heart to recognize it 
by. In that case I already know what is “ revealed.” That 
is an error. The faculty of judgment is a faculty of recog¬ 
nizing which is better of two objects or more. In order to 
acknowledge Hamlet as the best of plays I do not need an 
innate knowledge of Hamlet but only a power of compar¬ 
ing it with other works. The same is true of my recognition 
of the true good when presented: I had no knowledge of 
it before — except sub quadam confusione — but when I 
really see it, I can know it to be superior to all else I know. 
The object itself instructs us. But in the case of the high¬ 
est good, I am not, in fact, free to recognize this. Good can 
only be apprehended as such with the cooperation of de¬ 
sire. Mine is warped so that I cannot see it to begin with, 
and therefore the presentation of the good objectively is 
only possible if it is accompanied by the subjective correc¬ 
tion of aspiration. This is the work of the Holy Spirit, and 


Austin Farrer 


209 

there is no longer any sense in talking of a “ capacity ” I 
have for his action upon me. The only capacity I need is 
that I should be a mind, in order that there may be some¬ 
thing there for revelation to illumine. There must be a 
mind to use light when it has come, there must be desire 
and will, to be clothed with the love of God shed abroad in 
the heart, otherwise God would not be redeeming but cre¬ 
ating anew; but there need be no other innate power be¬ 
yond these faculties existing in a more or less degree of per¬ 
version. Their freedom before grace need be only such 
that they exist, not such that they are capable of response 
to God apart from God’s enabling action. For discovering 
the various degrees of perversion and perfection before 
grace, there is nothing like the observation of instances. 

If we speak of the supreme good as our supreme motive, 
it may appear that we are depersonalizing the relation be¬ 
tween us and God, and this has led some to prefer to inter¬ 
pret the claim of the divine will upon us as “an absolute 
personal claim ” rather than as the duty to realize intrinsic 
good. But “ an absolute personal claim ” is difficult to 
understand, if taken alone. No person has any claim upon 
us that we should further his purposes unless these purposes 
are good, either intrinsically or as a means to other good; 
so that a personal claim itself needs the sanction of intrinsic 
goodness. We may say in another sense that all persons 
have an absolute claim on us, because they are all the crea¬ 
tures of God, and doubtless God has a good to be realized 
through them; which good we are bound to try to discover 
and to foster — not because they now actively desire it, 
but because it is good. Our duty to God is the opposite — 
an absolute duty to promote his actual purposes, for they 
are simply good: none at all to promote the realization of 
good in him, for he has and is it all. 

The sanction, then, of our obedience is the supreme and 


210 The Christian Understanding of Man 

sole independent worth of his existence, which he extends 
to others according to the capacity he assigns them. But 
his existence is life and spirit, and, therefore, it is true 
enough that in subjecting ourselves to his activity and as¬ 
piring after him we are moved by emotions of reaction to 
a person and not a principle — and that, no doubt, is the 
substance of the contention that we have been criticizing. 

Aspiration after true good, and the loyalty of the will 
thereto, constitutes the spirituality of man, and the realiz¬ 
ing in him of God’s image. It is the cooperation of his 
whole self, and not his abstract intellect alone, with reason, 
in the sense not of a mere ratiocinative power, but of the 
faculty for grasping truth. So the man becomes, and not 
merely possesses, rationality. God, in willing his own ex¬ 
istence, wills absolute good. Man is the image of God in 
so far as he both has a will and wills the supreme good 
according to his ability. To will one’s self as God wills 
himself would be to realize not the image but the parody 
and blasphemy of God. 

Such an actualizing of true humanity has its true pat¬ 
tern completed in faith toward God through Christ. But 
there exists much aspiration after the true good in igno¬ 
rance of its true nature, and much loyalty of will in second¬ 
ing it. In men that are sane, such active rationality is never 
quite extinct, and there, just in such proportion as it is 
found, is a vestige of the image of God. But once again, 
as we said above of total depravity, if we wish to adopt the 
eschatological point of view, we may say that the image of 
God is lost in those that are lost — in those whose apprehen¬ 
sion of good is insufficient to bring them to the attainment 
of final and immovable rationality, that is, an absolute 
dwelling of their desire upon God. But if we speak not 
of the lost but of those that are being lost, then we must 
speak also of those that are losing the image of God. 


Austin Farrer 


211 


7. CONCLUSION 

In conclusion we will return to our beginning. Chris¬ 
tianity asserts indeed that there is a true nature of man, for 
that is the Creator’s intention, actual in the divine mind 
and never wholly unactualized in men if they are men at 
all. Of this true human nature men can and do become 
aware, not through speculative deduction, but piecemeal 
in the recognition of what is good for man. For such rec¬ 
ognition the favoring conditions are sensible reflection, 
honest intention, and a right relation with God. 

Christianity, therefore, does not come before the world 
with an ideology about man, the rival to several others. 
Those others it must condemn as forms of idolatry, but 
not by substituting an idol of its own. The church’s first 
mission is to re-create the right relation with God, or rather 
to be the instrument of God for such a work. Concerning 
the gospel of redemption, others have written eloquently 
in this book, and it would be superfluous to repeat what 
they have said about man’s fall and its divine remedy. 

But the church has a second mission besides. She knows 
the humanity as well as the deity of Christ: she exhibits 
the good for man shown forth in his conscience and life, 
and in the life and conscience of the saints ever since; and 
this supplies in part a guide to action, and on the basis of 
it she must utter the divine law in such detail as her vision 
allows or men’s need demands. We have suggested some 
of the heads under which the distinctively Christian teach¬ 
ing is likely to fall. But the codified experience of the 
true conscience in Christ cannot be treated as an oracle 
which will answer all questions. History does not wholly 
repeat itself, and a new situation will require a new deci¬ 
sion, which cannot be deduced simply from established 
principles. Such a decision, if it is right, cannot indeed be 


212 The Christian Understanding of Man 

out of harmony with the mind of the church hitherto; but 
harmony is a difficult thing to dogmatize upon; it cannot 
be settled by syllogizing. 

But however difficult the process of forming judgments, 
the church must judge whenever she thinks that a judg¬ 
ment, either vital or valuable, can be given; and she must 
judge, among other things, the state. Her judgments in 
this sphere will (on the evidence of what proceeds) differ 
from those of others only in being more purely ethical. 
She must refuse every assumption of the unquestioned 
value of any political aim; everything must be judged ac¬ 
cording to the part it can play in the realization of true 
human nature in the many, according to the church’s vision 
of what that nature is. 

State action must always present itself to the church in 
a double aspect. Every deliberate human act can be re¬ 
garded as a mere event, likely to lead to consequences good, 
bad or indifferent. But equally it can be regarded as lan¬ 
guage more effective than words; the eloquent expression 
of the agent’s mind. So every act of the state is an event 
likely to produce consequences by the ordinary sequence 
of cause and effect; but also it is the expression of a doctrine 
in the minds of those who stand behind it. A measure for 
physical education is an instrument by which the bodies 
of the educable will be affected: it is also an expression of 
the value attached by its authors to bodily welfare. It may 
be purely beneficial in the first regard, but in the second 
be put forward in such a way as to preach materialism. 

The church qua church is perhaps more concerned with 
the second aspect than the first; if, indeed, any comparison 
can be drawn. For the doctrine of life, silently preached by 
state action, may be to the Christian simply false. It is 
less often that he can judge the probable effect of measures 
to be simply deleterious, or demonstrably unjust. For he 


Austin Farrer 


213 

does not suppose that state action can realize the ideal with¬ 
out defect. No state measure will be perfectly just or un- 
mixedly useful to all inhabitants of a partly unregenerate 
world. It is a matter of finding the least bad alternative. 

Moreover, the church qua church is concerned first with 
spiritual truth, and, therefore, with combating the practi¬ 
cal expression of falsehood by all the means in her power. 
It is much harder for her to judge, through channels of 
ecclesiastical organization, what practical tendency the 
maintenance or change of any institution will have toward 
promoting or hindering her ideal for human life: except, 
indeed, when it is a question of her own freedom of spir¬ 
itual action being extended or diminished. 

This is the inevitable misery of the church: she must 
fight for the right to judge not only principles and doctrines 
expressed in the state, but also the ethical expediency of 
measures and institutions. And yet she cannot expect 
often to be either inwardly united or practically wise in 
judging the expediencies of the moment. But neither can 
she fall back on established precedent alone, and treat new 
situations as cases of old rules. She will often, then, cut 
a foolish figure: but she will be at least illustrating in act the 
ethical and spiritual judgment of state affairs, and that is 
more important sometimes than the prestige of ecclesi¬ 
astical infallibility. If we have any belief, however dim, 
in our guidance by the divine reason, we must suppose that 
Christians uttering and comparing their reflections on the 
ethical expediency of politics will be contributing toward 
the formation of a right judgment in the end, whatever the 
ineptitude or disunion of their first suggestions. 







THE CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING 
OF MAN 

by 

Walter Marshall Horton 





THE CHRISTIAN UNDERSTANDING OF MAN 


1 . THE CONTEMPORARY DEVALUATION OF MAN 

In this second quarter of the twentieth century, modem 
man is better prepared than at the turn of the century to 
hear and understand a Christian word addressed to him, on 
the subject of his own nature and condition. Then, his 
self-valuation was vastly inflated, and he viewed his re¬ 
ligious advisers with a mixture of amusement and con¬ 
tempt; now, he has gone through a sobering process of 
deflation, and is ready to listen, if not with much hope, 
at least with some interest, to anyone who offers him a 
heartening word of counsel. 

Victor Monod, of the faculty of Protestant theology in 
Strasbourg, has recently written a remarkable book 1 in 
which this contemporary Devaluation of Man is vividly 
portrayed. He points out that the sense of human worth 
and dignity is largely based upon two peculiarly human 
devices by which primitive man very early showed his 
superiority over other animals: the use of tools, by which 
he has asserted his dominion over things in space; and the 
making of agreements and contracts, whereby he has as¬ 
serted his dominance over events in time. Toward the 
close of the nineteenth century, science and technology 
seemed to have brought these two ancient means of pre¬ 
diction and control to such a pitch of perfection that man 
began to see himself as veritable lord of creation, and Swin¬ 
burne could sing “ Glory to Man in the highest, for Man 

i Divalorisation de I’homme (Paris, Alcan, 1935). 

217 


218 The Christian Understanding of Man 

is the Master of Things! ” Today, after the disillusion- 
ments of the World War and world depression, man’s 
sense of his own value has ebbed to the zero point. He 
begins to suspect that in passing from the tool to the ma¬ 
chine, he has overreached himself and lost the power he 
possessed in grasping for more. A workman with a tool 
in his hand has worth, because without his skill the tool is 
useless; but as the tool develops into the power-driven 
machine, the workman becomes less and less important, 
until at last a single easily replaceable employee stands 
watching a whole vast roomful of machinery, occasionally 
pushing a button or throwing a lever, while solar energy in 
some one of its various guises does the real work. And in a 
world where machines have thus got the upper hand, future 
events are no longer predictable. Contracts and agree¬ 
ments, whose central importance for human society is at¬ 
tested by the immense care with which their sanctity has 
been guarded ever since the days of Hammurabi, have 
in our generation been rendered null and void by the grow¬ 
ing unpredictability of the course of events. In contem¬ 
porary society, legal contracts are continually being voided 
on the plea of “ unforeseeable circumstances and inter¬ 
national agreements are proverbially less enduring than 
the paper on which they are written. 

What impends under these circumstances is not merely 
the breakdown of ancient moral sanctions; it is, as M. 
Monod insists, the breakdown of morale itself which un¬ 
derlies all codes of morals. Instead of being the “ Master 
of Things,” modern man has become the servant of things, 
the plaything of untamable forces and events. Like the 
Apprentice Sorcerer, he has released by his scientific magic 
all sorts of powers which he cannot control, and stands 
helplessly watching the havoc these forces are creating, 
while he waits for some Master to return and put things 


Walter Marshall Horton 219 

in order. Or to use a figure of Bergson’s, man is now, 
with his globe-encircling mechanical devices, like an im¬ 
measurably overdeveloped body, whose animating mind is 
“ too little to fill it, too weak to direct it.” Unless he can 
be aroused from his apathy and given new morale, he will 
allow the present disastrous drift of events to proceed me¬ 
chanically toward the chaos for which it is headed without 
lifting a finger to save himself from destruction. 

Some Christian thinkers have seen in this current de¬ 
flation or devaluation of man the means of inducing in 
our contemporaries a mood of humility meet for repent¬ 
ance. To deepen men’s self-distrust seems like the quickest 
and most efficacious way of leading them to trust in God — 
or at least the most opportune way at the moment — and 
so there are found many Christian pessimists in our time, 
ever ready to answer the wails of secular pessimists with 
antiphonal groans, when the plight of modern man comes 
up for discussion. Yet it is a dangerous stratagem to exalt 
God at the expense of man; almost, though not quite so 
dangerous as to exalt man at the expense of God. Faith in 
God and faith in man are so interdependent that we can¬ 
not utterly despair of man without undermining faith in 
God, just as we cannot ignore God without undermining 
faith in man. If the godless secularism of modem times 
leads inevitably to that loss of trust in humanity which is 
so evident today, the attempt to bludgeon man into abject 
submission to God may lead with equal logicality to a 
new wave of atheism. 

Christian teaching is not merely guilty of bad strategy 
when it thus succumbs to contemporary pessimism; it is 
false to its own gospel. The Christian gospel, when rightly 
received, humbles man to a sense of grateful dependence 
upon the power, grace and forgiveness of God; it does not 
humiliate him nor break his spirit. To the proud and 


220 The Christian Understanding of Man 

self-sufficient it speaks sternly of One who has often, in the 
course of history, “ put down the mighty from their seats 
and exalted the humble and meek.” But in the same 
breath, it declares that man is God’s child, made in the 
divine image, destined for an exalted post, as God’s vice¬ 
gerent on this planet, so soon as he learns to find his joy 
in obedience to his Father’s will. It does not crush him 
as a “ worm of the dust it stirs him by showing him that 
he is betraying a great responsibility and missing a supreme 
opportunity. In short, the Christian gospel has precisely 
that steadying word of mingled warning and encourage¬ 
ment which is needed to put fresh heart and saving contri¬ 
tion into our sick and dazed contemporaries — if they could 
but grasp its meaning. 

2 . “ FACT ” AND “ TRUTH ” IN THE CHRISTIAN 
UNDERSTANDING OF MAN 

The chief reason why it is difficult to convey the Chris¬ 
tian understanding of man to our generation is that secular 
thought and religious thought have been pursuing diver¬ 
gent paths in western Christendom since the close of the 
Middle Ages. 

Medieval Christian thought, as represented in the philos¬ 
ophy of Aquinas and the poetry of Dante, had the great 
merit of uniting the secular and religious understanding 
of man in one comprehensive view. In the medieval 
synthesis, Aristotle’s scientific theory of man as a rational 
and political animal found an honorable place, subordi¬ 
nate to the higher verities of the Christian gospel which 
alone could reveal man’s ultimate source and goal, but 
nevertheless part of the same hierarchical scheme of things. 

What John Macmurray claims as always true of religious 
thought “ when it is real ” was emphatically true of medi¬ 
eval Christian thought — it was “ alive both to the facts of 


Walter Marshall Horton 221 

the empirical situation and to a truth which is denied by 
the facts, and which is, for all that, their eternal essence.” 2 
What the philosophy of Aquinas did for the educated 
classes, the popular lore embedded in the carving of the 
French cathedrals did for the rank and file — it related 
every natural fact to some mystic meaning and placed the 
daily round of life in constant juxtaposition with heaven 
and hell. Religion and life were one, not two; religious 
mysteries were half hidden, half revealed in precisely this 
world wherein men lived and walked; and as Dante’s Di¬ 
vine Comedy illustrates, astronomy itself was correlated 
point by point with moral theology. The synthesis was 
too perfect to last, of course, for not all the “ facts ” ac¬ 
cepted by the medieval mind were really facts, and not all 
its “ truths ” were true, or germane to the facts with which 
they were fancifully connected; but until some such rela¬ 
tion of fact and truth is recovered in our time, religious 
and secular thought will continue to be irrelevant to one 
another. 

Religious thought cannot escape its share of the blame 
for the loss of balance in the modern understanding of 
man. In Luther’s commentary on Romans, he went out 
of his way to express contempt for the scholastic and Aris¬ 
totelian attempt to study man as he is, empirically: “ Who¬ 
ever considers the essences and operations of creatures, 
rather than their aspirations and expectations, is without 
doubt stupid and blind, and knows not that creatures are 
creatures.” 3 In this remarkable saying, and many like it, 
the great reformer exhibited profound insight into that 
deeper religious “ truth ” about man which outruns and 
seems to contradict the empirical facts of human nature; 
but he erred when he isolated this higher truth (em- 

2 Creative Society, p. 69. 

3 M. A. H. Stomps, Die Anthropologie Martin Luthers, p. 15. 


222 The Christian Understanding of Man 

bodied in the biblical view of man’s divine origin and 
destiny) from all empirical knowledge of man as he is. 

From that day to this there has been a tendency in 
conservative Protestant thought to ignore, suppress or 
deny all facts that seem to collide with the biblical view 
of man; and to draw man’s portrait directly from sacred 
texts, instead of from life in the light of Christian revela¬ 
tion. The animal ancestry of man, for example, has been 
denied and opposed by Christian theologians on religious 
grounds to their own ultimate discomfiture; while at the 
same time a theological lay figure of “ the natural man ” 
has been constructed which no layman would recognize as 
natural. Only a few literary geniuses like Pascal have 
known how to present the Christian estimate of the “ great¬ 
ness and misery of man ” in terms that actually strike home 
to the lay conscience. 

When religious thought thus withdrew from the world 
of common life, it was to be expected that secular thought 
would increasingly ignore it, and try to solve the problem 
of man in wholly factual and naturalistic terms. What one 
gets, when one thus attempts to define man’s place in the 
world without reference to God, is a curiously unstable 
estimate of his importance, fluctuating wildly between noth¬ 
ing and everything. 

It is as though modern man, since his emancipation 
from medievalism, had been exhibiting the typical reac¬ 
tions of a pampered only child suddenly put out in the 
cold world to shift for himself. By turns, he swaggers with 
self-importance and shivers with fright. In the snug medi¬ 
eval world it seemed self-evident that man was God’s only 
child. But when the Copernican revolution and its sequel 
set him in a vast impersonal universe, where he was no 
longer at the center but lost amid the immensities and the 
eternities, he shrank and trembled and cried out with 


Walter Marshall Horton 223 

Pascal, “ The silence of these infinite spaces frightens me! ” 
Finding the notion of his own insignificance quite unen¬ 
durable, he reverted to pride and boastfulness when it oc¬ 
curred to him that his own thought had forged the picture 
of the universe which so terrified him. By the magic 
formula, “ The world is my idea,” the Copernican revolu¬ 
tion was undone and the universe made to revolve again 
around man as its center. At the height of the idealistic 
movement, men made and remade systems of philosophy 
as if they were indeed creating worlds by fiat and demolish¬ 
ing them with a wave of the hand. Darwinism gave a great 
blow to this idealistic habit of thought and set homo sapiens 
down with a thud among his humble mammalian ancestors; 
but after a brief period of humiliation he recovered his 
pride again — for was he not the last and highest product 
of evolution, the end toward which the whole creation 
moved, the sole point at which the cosmic process became 
conscious of itself and devised scientific means for its own 
endless improvement? 

Now again, since the World War our human sense of 
worth is deflated; but there is nothing in the sphere of 
mere fact to prevent our continuing to alternate between 
despair and megalomania in the future as in the past. Re¬ 
ligion alone — and that, for us, means the Christian revela¬ 
tion — can adequately interpret facts which by themselves 
are ambiguous or meaningless. God alone — and that, for 
us, means the God revealed in Christ — can mediate be¬ 
tween man and nature, and decide which is subordinate 
to the other. If Christianity is actually to rescue modern 
man from the twin dangers of egotism and humiliation, 
one thing must be clearly understood: that Christian reve¬ 
lation is not a ready-made system of knowledge, contend¬ 
ing with scientific knowledge on the same factual plane, 
but a set of extraordinary facts — Israel, Christ, the church 


224 The Christian Understanding of Man 

— in which Christian faith finds the key to the meaning of 
all facts. The biblical view of man is authoritative, not 
as a literal account of how he was created and what he is 
composed of, but as an interpretation of his relationship 
to the Ultimate Being, God, whereby his relations to his 
natural and social environment are clarified, and the mean¬ 
ing of his existence is defined. 

The biblical anthropology is most simply and clearly 
expressed in Psalm 8, where man is described as a tiny 
helpless creature, a mere babe, looking up in awe at the 
high heavens which dwarf him into insignificance, yet 
raised to a position of dominance and dignity “ a little 
lower than the angels,” with the whole animate creation 
“ under his feet,” because the Maker of this vast world is 
“ mindful ” of him and “ visits ” him. This account of 
man’s place finds its echo in the Genesis account of his 
creation (out of the “ dust of the earth,” yet in the “ image 
of God ”) and in the New Testament gospel of his re¬ 
demption (by a God so “ mindful ” of his need as to 
“ visit ” him personally in the midst of his afflictions and 
die for his sins). The Thomistic doctrine of man (as a 
creature situated on the border-line between corporeal and 
purely spiritual substances, in confinio corporalium et sepa- 
ratarum substantiarum, lowest among intelligent beings 
but first in the order of material forms, reflecting im¬ 
perfectly in his progressive and responsive activity the actus 
purus that belongs to God alone) simply applies the bibli¬ 
cal interpretation of man’s origin, rank and destiny to the 
data of Aristotelian science, the best approximation to 
44 fact ” which the Middle Ages possessed. It gives scho¬ 
lastic precision to the biblical idea that man is “ a little 
lower than the angels.” 4 It is the business of contempo- 

4 The word elohim, “ divine beings,” literally includes God and all 
other heavenly beings; but since the medieval doctrine of angels sharpened 
the gradations in the heavenly hierarchy, “ angels ” translates the Psalmist’s 
meaning very well. 


Walter Marshall Horton 225 

rary theology to use the same ancient clue for the elucida¬ 
tion of the meaning of human life in its modern setting. 
All the empirical data which scientific anthropology, physi¬ 
ology, psychology, sociology, etc., have been heaping up, 
together with the empirical insights of modern novelists 
and modern saints, are as germane to the modern Chris¬ 
tian understanding of man as was the philosophy of Aris¬ 
totle to the medieval Christian understanding of man. 
But these empirical data are unintelligible except in the 
light of the biblical revelation of man’s more than empiri¬ 
cal source, nature and end. 

Let us try briefly to organize our contemporary empirical 
knowledge of man in terms of the biblical understanding 
of man, using medieval ideas from time to time as con¬ 
venient middle terms. In so doing we shall find ourselves 
passing successively from three great groups of “ facts ” 
to corresponding “ truths,” which Christian faith asserts 
to be the truth of these very facts: 

(1) From the general facts of scientific anthropology, 
to the truth that man is a great and marvelous work of 
God his creator, made in the divine image out of humble 
materials. 

(2) From the special fact of human frustration and self- 
contradiction, to the truth that man is a sinner, responsible 
in the sight of God his judge. 

(3) From the unique fact of the new life in Christ and 
the church, to the truth that man is potentially the beloved 
son and heir of God his redeemer. 

3. MAN AS CREATURE 

The biological, psychological and sociological facts 
which form the scientific substructure of any adequate 
doctrine of man are so numerous and various that it is 
difficult to view them in perspective. Faulty perspective 
is especially likely to result from the circumstance that 


226 The Christian Understanding of Man 

human physiology, as a part of the relatively well developed 
general science of biology, has attained a degree of ac¬ 
curacy and certainty only excelled by that of the physical 
sciences; while psychology and sociology are only sciences 
in the making, full of unclarified philosophical assump¬ 
tions and disturbed by the clamor of rival schools; yet quite 
plainly the most characteristic and distinctive facts about 
man fall in these only partly explored fields. Dr. Alexis 
Carrel, in his popular book Man the Unknown, has made 
a valiant pioneer attempt to introduce proper perspective 
into scientific anthropology, by briefly summarizing the 
physiological knowledge of which he is an acknowledged 
master, and combining it with such psychological and soci¬ 
ological facts as seem to him highly probable — including 
such commonly questioned phenomena as the occurrence 
of telepathy and healing miracles. In so doing, Dr. Carrel 
has made it evident, I think, that the modern science of 
man, with all its distinguished attainments, has not really 
destroyed the applicability of the main concepts of Aris¬ 
totelian anthropology which formed the substructure of the 
medieval Christian doctrine of man; nor has it abolished 
the necessity of a more than scientific doctrine of man’s 
ultimate origin, nature and destiny. Let us endeavor to 
pour our modern data into the molds of medieval Christian 
thought and see if they spill over. 

Aristotelian biology, in its bearing upon the doctrine 
of man, may be summarized in the proposition that man 
is an animal; psychology, in the proposition that man is a 
rational animal; sociology, in the proposition that man is 
a social animal (zdon politicon ). All three of these propo¬ 
sitions hold good in modern terms. 

(a) Man Is an Animal. While Aristotle’s astronomy 
has been completely upset by Copernicus, his biology has 
not been so fundamentally transformed by Darwin. What 


Walter Marshall Horton 227 

the Stagirite saw as a hierarchy of fixed forms has been 
changed into a succession of evolving species lineally de¬ 
scended from one another; but the order of descent sub¬ 
stantially corresponds to the ascending order in the hier¬ 
archy. What he called the “ vegetative ” and “ sensitive ” 
souls are still recognizable as the organic and sensory func¬ 
tions which man shares with the simpler forms of organism 
that preceded him in the evolutionary series. 

As an animal, descended from lower animals and carry¬ 
ing active or vestigial reminders of his descent in his physi¬ 
ological structure, man has many definite limitations which 
cannot be overstepped without paying physiological pen¬ 
alties: first disease, finally death. It is Dr. Carrel’s sober 
opinion that modern civilization has imposed a topheavy 
burden upon man’s physique which no animal is capable 
of enduring; and while scientific medicine is decreasing 
the incidence of infectious diseases, it cannot check the in¬ 
crease of degenerative and nervous diseases unless man 
returns to a manner of life more in conformity with his 
nature as an animal. No animal can escape the law that 
the mechanisms of physiological adaptation suffer atrophy 
without physical exercise and hardship; and from such 
atrophy to nervous strain, degeneration and death is a short 
road. 

In successive generations of pure-bred dogs, nervousness is 
often observed to increase. . . . This phenomenon occurs in 
subjects brought up under artificial conditions, living in com¬ 
fortable kennels, and provided with choice food quite differ¬ 
ent from that of their ancestors, the shepherds, which fought 
and defeated the wolves. 5 

A part of the prophetic message of the Christian church 
to modern man must be a warning based on physiology: 
“ Act within the limits of your animal constitution; or by 

e Carrel, Man the Unknown (New York, Harpers, 1935) pp. 157, 158. 


228 The Christian Understanding of Man 

God’s law, laid down in your bones and tissues, you and 
your line will perish.” We must add, however, that some 
of the anthropological doctrines now being promulgated 
in the name of science, especially in the field of “ race,” 
are to be rejected, not only because they are unchristian, 
but because they are based on bad biology. 

(b) Man Is a Rational Animal. “ The soul is the aspect 
of ourselves that is specific of our nature and distinguishes 
man from the other animals.” This might be a citation 
from medieval philosophy; it is actually Dr. Carrel’s formu¬ 
lation 6 of what he calls the “ operational concept of the 
mind ” required by modern science. Scientific psychology 
is in fact quite compatible with the Aristotelian and 
Thomistic conception of the soul; whereas it is hard to 
reconcile with the extreme dualism of Plato and Descartes. 
A view of the human rational soul which conceives of it 
as the form or activity of the body, intimately united with 
a whole hierarchy of animal functions such as nutrition, 
reproduction, sensation and memory, is a view which makes 
the soul a proper object for scientific study, and accommo¬ 
dates itself easily to changes in the empirical data it seeks 
to synthesize. 

If there is any point at which the Aristotelian view of 
the specific nature of human intelligence needs basic re¬ 
vision, it is to be found in its excessive emphasis upon 
pure intellectual contemplation ( theoria) as man’s highest 
activity. Disinterested love of truth and joy in truth have 
indeed found their best expression in modern science; but 
the scientific study of man’s early development has made 
it clear that his supremacy over other animals is funda¬ 
mentally based upon a more “ instrumental ” use of in¬ 
telligence, wherein moments of intuitive contemplation oc¬ 
cur as part of a rhythmic alternating flow, from action 
toward imagination and back again to action. 

e Ibid., p. 118. 


Walter Marshall Horton 229 

Human intelligence begins with the ability to manipu¬ 
late objects between the prehensile thumb and forefinger 
so as to make them serve as means to the ends which 
imagination envisages. Physical tools, language and free 
ideas — culminating in long chains of mathematical propo¬ 
sitions or poetic symbols — are among the most important 
improvements by which the process of fitting means to 
ends, and revising ends in the light of consequences, has 
been perfected. Through these and other inventions, man 
has been enabled to handle his environment with a degree 
of flexibility of which no other animal is capable. He is 
the most adaptable and teachable of animals, responding 
to a change of circumstance not by growing a new organ, 
but by manipulating environmental factors until they serve 
his purposes. He has all the fundamental drives and im¬ 
pulses which are called instincts in other animals; but as 
Professor C. H. Cooley has said, animal instincts are to 
human, rationally adaptable drives what a music-box play¬ 
ing set tunes is to a piano on which all manner of tunes can 
be played. Aristotle’s Ethics gives large recognition to this 
instrumental use of intelligence as a control over conduct 
— in fact, it constitutes the basis of his distinction between 
the purely intellectual and genuinely moral virtues — but 
his Greek scorn for the artisan classes, and his own pro¬ 
fession as a leisured philosophical observer of life, pre¬ 
vented his recognizing the supplemental relation between 
action and contemplation. 

All that Christian theology needs, as empirical basis for 
its doctrines of human freedom and immortality, is this 
conception of man as a rational animal. The chief grounds 
of these doctrines are not simply empirical, but meta¬ 
physical and theological. It is because God is man’s eternal 
source and goal that human acts of volition can never be 
completely determined by the immediate and apparent 


230 The Christian Understanding of Man 

but transient goods which first catch his attention; and it 
is this same dissatisfaction with things transient, this same 
restless hunger for things eternal, which is the principal 
ground of faith in his immortality. All that is necessary 
to provide an empirical basis for this act of faith is to 
insist that man is not merely driven from behind by com¬ 
pulsive animal instincts, nor merely capable of “ rationaliz¬ 
ing” these blind urges in the delusive way described by 
Freudian psychology, but possesses a genuine capacity for 
receiving his motives from rationally envisaged ends. Gen¬ 
uinely rational motives are always struggling with irra¬ 
tional drives, and the mastery they attain is a precarious 
mastery; but it is an empirically verifiable fact that moti¬ 
vation can flow from reason toward desire, as well as in the 
opposite direction. The Christian doctrine of man admits 
the power of these compulsive forces in man to which 
Freud and Marx call attention, and it adds thereto the 
power of sin; but against all theories that reduce man to 
a mere irresponsible puppet, it protests, both in the name 
of Christ and in the name of sound philosophy. 

(c) Man Is a Social Animal. The Aristotelian sociology 
may be summed up in the famous description of man as a 
“ political animal,” or more fully in the remark, toward 
the end of the Ethics (X, 1180 a ), that “ he who is to be 
good must have been brought up and habituated well, and 
then live accordingly under good institutions, and never 
do what is low and mean, either against or with his will.” 
The “ institutions ” here referred to are not merely politi¬ 
cal institutions, but specifically include private institutions 
like the family. Aristotle is perfectly convinced that the 
individual cannot attain his true good except in loyal re¬ 
lationship to society; but he is equally convinced that the 
best society is not the totalitarian state. The Spartan state, 


Walter Marshall Horton 231 

the nearest approach to complete collectivism that came 
under his observation, was not his ideal. “ Private train¬ 
ing/’ he remarked, “ has advantages over public . . . the 
individual will be most exactly attended to under private 
care, because so each will be more likely to obtain what is 
expedient for him ” {ibid., 1180). 

This general position, that the individual needs society 
for his own fulfilment, but thrives best in a society which 
does not swallow him up in the mass, is entirely con¬ 
firmed by modern observation. Dr. Carrel remarks that 
our “ visible frontiers,” the skin and the digestive-respira¬ 
tory mucosas, are quite plainly not our real frontiers, but 
only “ a plane of cleavage indispensable to our action.” 
As the body takes in chemical substances, selecting from 
them those which tend to build up its individuality, so 
the mental life takes in from its social environment im¬ 
pressions and influences which tend to build up individual 
character. But the individual who becomes only a “ unit 
in a school,” or a “ unit in the herd ” in some great factory, 
city or collectivist state, is stunted in his growth. “ In 
order to reach his real strength, the individual requires 
the relative isolation and the attention of the restricted 
social group consisting of the family.” 7 

Christianity has always had to combat the extremes of 
individualism and collectivism, in the interest of its own 
characteristic conception of the church as a body with 
many members, a community of free individuals. It would 
be too much to say that secular science and philosophy, 
by themselves, lead to any such exalted conception of social 
life; but this much can fairly be claimed — that in her 
present struggle with the tendency toward anarchic indi¬ 
vidualism in democratic, capitalistic countries, and with 
7 Carrel, op. cit., chap, vii, esp. p. 270. 


232 The Christian Understanding of Man 

the tendency toward tyrannical collectivism in fascistic or 
communistic countries, the church has the support of the 
great masters of social science and philosophy, both ancient 
and modern. She speaks not only with the voice of faith, 
but with the voice of knowledge; and what she has learned 
from “ the Master of those who know ” is a part, though 
only a part, of the Christian understanding of man. 

(d) Man As God's Creature, Made in the Divine Image. 
All the facts of human physiology, psychology and soci¬ 
ology, taken together, are not enough to establish the 
Christian view of man as God’s creature, made in his image. 
This mass of scientific data does indeed demand philo¬ 
sophic interpretation; and if there is anything in the 
maxim that the stream cannot rise higher than its source, 
the most rational interpretation of man’s origin is one 
which ascribes it to a creative principle that is more than 
mechanistic, more then vitalistic, and at least as intelligent 
as man himself. Yet this Creative Intelligence is not the 
Christian God. If it were, one might be content to inter¬ 
pret the divine image in man as St. Thomas interprets it — 
reason itself, or the power of self-determination through 
the envisagement of ideal ends. But this interpretation of 
the divine image presupposses the Aristotelian view of 
God as the Unmoved Mover, creating and moving all 
things by pure thought, without ever coming forth from 
his splendid isolation into the world he has created; 
whereas the Christian God is a God of sacrificial love, for¬ 
ever coming forth to communicate grace and truth to his 
creatures. The image of God, then, must be interpreted 
as man’s capacity to respond gratefully to the divine love 
that patiently seeks him out, and to show his gratitude for 
God’s patient mercy by exhibiting a similar magnanimity 
to his neighbors, even though they be his enemies. 

This is that Godlikeness which Jesus held up before 


Walter Marshall Horton 233 

his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount, and which he 
himself exhibited when he went to the cross for mankind’s 
sake, begging forgiveness for his enemies as they crucified 
him. No scientific anthropology could ever prove that man 
is capable of Godlikeness in this sense; though it might 
establish the fact that, like many of his humble mammalian 
ancestors, he knows “ how to give good gifts to his chil¬ 
dren,” and to some extent is accustomed to push the atti¬ 
tude of loving generosity beyond the limits of the natural 
family, to include members of other groups for which he 
has a strong “ we-feeling.” The confirmation of this Chris¬ 
tian view of God and man is only to be found in the non- 
scientific observation, that when the challenge to be God¬ 
like is presented to him in the gospel, man does sometimes 
respond to it with a disinterested, reverent, self-forgetful 
devotion for which his devotion to wife and child, or 
country, or truth, or beauty, is only a partial analogy; so 
that even though he fails to live up to the challenge, his 
conscience remains uneasy and he bows down in penitence 
before the God of love whom he continues to crucify. 

Between Aristotle’s rational, social animal and the full 
Christian understanding of man, as a divinely fashioned 
creature capable of reflecting and transmitting the divine 
sacrificial love, there is a great gap that must not be mini¬ 
mized, and that only faith can bridge. Yet the secular, sci¬ 
entific portrait of man, in its modern as well as its ancient 
and medieval forms, needs to be incorporated in the Chris¬ 
tian view, both as a point of contact with the secular mind, 
and as a needed check upon fanatical aberrations in Chris¬ 
tian belief. If we have gone to some length to prove that the 
Thomistic doctrine of the natural man still very largely 
holds good, it is not because we believe either Aristotle or 
Aquinas said the last word on human nature, but because 
Thomistic philosophy did render full justice, in its day, to 


234 The Christian Understanding of Man 

the scientific view of man which should always form the 
groundwork of Christian anthropology. The Christian 
view of man is the eternal truth; but unless this truth is 
expressed in terms of commonly accepted facts, man will 
not recognize it as the truth about his actual, contemporary 
self. 


4. MAN AS SINNER 

The facts which support the truth that man is God’s 
creature are, to a considerable extent, both empirical and 
scientific. Those which support the truth that man is 
a sinner are empirical but in the nature of the case non- 
scientific, since they involve appreciative judgments of 
value that are beyond the scope of scientific method. It 
is not to the pure scientists, then, with their completely 
matter-of-fact view of human nature that we must go for 
our data, but to the novels of a Dostoievsky or the Confes¬ 
sions of a St. Augustine, checked by the specific studies of 
clinical psychiatrists and criminologists such as applied sci¬ 
entists. 

We cannot start with sin as a recognized fact. Dr. T. Z. 
Koo has said that in his work as a Christian evangelist 
he rarely finds a man awakened to the fact that he is a 
sinner. It is the great saints who recognize themselves as 
sinners; and to do so is already to be half delivered. But 
what the average man does recognize as a fact in his life 
is frustration or conflict. There is a widespread human 
acknowledgment that we are making rather a mess of 
things, that the longer we continue in the ordinary way 
of life the more confused and meaningless it gets. Great 
novelists, autobiographers and psychiatrists help to clarify 
this common consciousness of an undefined evil that presses 
down upon us all. 

The evil occurs in very specific forms which demand 


Walter Marshall Horton 235 

specific treatment like the various types of disease. Not 
everyone has a completely divided will, like St. Paul or 
St. Augustine or Luther just before their conversions. 
Not everyone's experience is as macabre as that of Dos¬ 
toievsky’s Man from the Underworld. Not everyone is in 
danger of becoming a paranoiac, or committing burglary. 
Hence the infinite variety of the methods that must be 
employed in the cure of souls and the need of deep in¬ 
tuitive insight into the peculiar needs of the individual. 
Yet there runs through all human experience a common 
element which binds us together in a brotherhood of woe. 
It is a sense of a blockade, an isolation, an estrangement 
between ourselves and that which we dimly feel to be 
our highest good; and this blockade makes it impossible 
for us to trust ourselves freely and expansively to our world, 
as the swimmer trusts himself to the waves. Instead, we 
adopt a contractive attitude, dominated by fear or anger; 
we shrink back from life, or we allow it to drift meaning- 
lessly on, or we hit out resentfully at all who would pre¬ 
sume to lay an obligation upon us. And all the time, if 
we observe ourselves closely, we are grudgingly conscious 
that we are to blame for this state of affairs; that ignorance 
and finiteness and hampering circumstance, and the pres¬ 
sure of animal impulse, are all insufficient to account for 
it. Christianity interprets this to mean that we are re¬ 
sisting or evading something that means our good, and with 
which we need to be reconciled; we are guilty sinners who 
must ask forgiveness and be converted. 

The sense of sin and guilt has suffered a great eclipse in 
recent times; it is an ominous symptom. Modern man 
is not well, but he refuses to admit he is sick. He represses 
the notion of guilt; he laughs convulsively whenever 
“ hell ” and “ the devil ” are mentioned. No doubt the 
Puritan mind was morbid on these subjects and a reaction 


236 The Christian Understanding of Man 

was necessary. But there is plenty of evidence in our 
mental hospitals that the repressed idea of guilt is still 
present in the contemporary mind, and bursts forth in 
melancholy splendor when the mask of convention is re¬ 
moved. Dr. Anton Boisen, who has himself twice experi¬ 
enced psychoses, and who as a psychiatrically trained chap¬ 
lain has since observed multitudes of sufferers in mental 
hospitals, testifies that “ the outstanding evil in all of 
them has been according to our findings, the sense of iso¬ 
lation or guilt.” 8 Some, to be sure, escape from guilt 
through lapsing into apathy; others, through systematic 
delusions of grandeur which identify them with God or 
his representatives; but those who struggle most realistically 
with their actual condition, and have the best chance of 
being cured, are precisely those with the strongest sense 
of guilt. Certain schools of psychiatry try, indeed, to treat 
the sense of guilt as a pathological condition, and cure it 
by lowering the threshold of conscience; but this is simply 
another evasion, analogous to that which criminals use 
when they give each other a sense of acceptance and for¬ 
giveness by condoning each other’s crimes. The only real 
escape from guilt is through confession, forgiveness and 
conversion. 

The Christian doctrine of sin is an interpretation of 
precisely these facts with which psychiatrists and criminolo¬ 
gists deal professionally. It asserts that we live in a world 
whose eternal ground is not an inscrutable fate, nor an in¬ 
different and fortuitous “ concourse of atoms,” but a Will 
that is just and merciful, and seeks our deepest good. 
This Will has put us under hard and testing conditions, 
but it has implanted in us no basic impulse that is in¬ 
capable of being directed to worthy ends, and it has sur- 

s Boisen, The Exploration of the Inner World (Willett, Clark and Co., 
Chicago, 1936), p. 150. 


Walter Marshall Horton 237 

rounded us with gracious influences that are impeded only 
by the obstacles that we (or our neighbors) have thrown 
in their way. Hence we cannot say with Omar Khayyam: 

O Thou who man of baser clay didst make. 

And e’en with Paradise devised the snake. 

For all the sin wherewith the face of man 
Is blackened, man’s forgiveness give — and take I 

Rather we have to recognize that we have misused man’s 
kingly prerogative as a rational animal by envisaging and 
pursuing ends that are unworthy of pursuit; and we have 
misused man’s prerogative as a social animal by making 
others bear the burden of our selfishness. Old Testa¬ 
ment prophecy interprets the woe that results from this 
misuse as the righteous judgment of a divine Lawgiver 
who never punishes us more than we deserve. The New 
Testament interprets it as part of the burden of a divine 
Sin-bearer, who suffers agony and death with us and for 
us, that we may turn and be reconciled with him. Sin in 
the Old Testament means violation of a fair contract made 
with an equitable divine Ruler; in the New Testament it 
means swinish trampling upon a divine magnanimity that 
gladly humbles itself to share our woes. If God is really 
like Christ no wonder we feel frustrated, divided and guilty 
so long as we continue to live for ourselves, or for the 
baubles that most commonly attract us. Sin is what St. 
Augustine called it, amor sui usque ad contemptum Dei; 
and we must continue to be tormented in our minds until 
we learn to forget ourselves in the one love that can absorb 
us: the love of God, expressed in Christlike love for our 
sinful and unfortunate fellow men. 

5. MAN AS SON AND HEIR OF GOD 

The facts upon which the Christian truth of man’s des¬ 
tiny as a son of God is based are still less extensive and 


238 The Christian Understanding of Man 

still less scientific than those which support the truth that 
he is a sinner. All men have experienced the sting of 
sin, even though they fail to recognize it for what it is; 
but only a limited number have known the joy of redemp¬ 
tion from sin, and adoption as God’s sons and heirs. In 
collecting our data here, we shall get little help from such 
calm intellects as Aristotle or Aquinas, and much help 
from such passionate souls as Luther, who knew man’s 
diviner “ aspirations and expectations ” as well as the an¬ 
gelic doctor knew his more common “ essences and opera¬ 
tions.” To make the data quite contemporary, let us take 
as our witnesses some of those contemporary Wrestlers with 
Christ of whom Karl Pfleger has eloquently written — men 
like Bloy, Peguy, Soloviev and Berdyaev, who in our own 
day have sounded the same heights and depths of human 
nature formerly explored by St. Augustine, Luther, Pascal, 
George Fox and John Bunyan. 

These men are sinners, they are mortal and fallible, they 
are chafed by their animal nature and do not know how to 
master it. Even after they realize their divine sonship, and 
their heritage of eternal life, they fall into despair. Yet 
one thing they repeat in chorus: that there is an unearthly 
joy that lies beyond despair; that just so soon (or so often) 
as man decisively lets go of his life and commits it abso¬ 
lutely to the mysterious will that seeks him through his 
pain, he begins to have foretastes of the beatific vision, and 
knows he has found his chief end. The spectacle of L£on 
Bloy giving himself to the prostitute “ Veronica ” with an 
increasingly spiritual passion that first rescued and beati¬ 
fied them both, and afterwards, pathetically, drove them 
through unwise austerity into mental collapse; or of Peguy, 
led by his humanitarian passion for social revolution back 
to the religious faith of his youth, yet abstaining from bap¬ 
tism and communion because (unlike Bunyan’s Christian) 


Walter Marshall Horton 239 

he could not bear to enter the pathway of salvation without 
his wife and children — such episodes as these remind us 
that even in our own time it is possible for men to exhibit 
Christlike traits and devote themselves with complete aban¬ 
don to the will of God as they understand it. In the light 
of such individual experiences, and the collective experi¬ 
ence of the church, the theory of the " divine humanity,” 
developed by Soloviev and Berdyaev along lines suggested 
by Dostoievsky, has great appeal. There is, from this point 
of view, an eternal humanity in the nature of God, and an 
eternal divinity in the nature of man. The historical union 
of the two in Christ, the God-man, and in the church which 
continues the incarnation, is but the manifestation in 
time of an eternal unity of God, man and world. Through 
man, redeemed by Christ to a knowledge of his true divine 
essence, God is to redeem all the universe, which “ groan- 
eth and travaileth until now, waiting for the revelation of 
the sons of God.” Such a doctrine of man’s essentially 
divine nature is at the opposite pole from another con¬ 
temporary Christian philosophy, according to which there 
is nothing in man to respond to the grace of God, and God 
must, so to speak, knock a hole in man in order to find 
entrance. The first of these views presupposes the Eastern 
Orthodox belief in man’s capacity for deification, whereas 
our stern neo-Calvinists insist upon the great gulf that re¬ 
mains fixed between Creator and creature, and the essential 
sinfulness of the “ saved ” man — simul justus et peccator. 

We shall be closest to the authentic Christian interpre¬ 
tation of man’s higher nature if we avoid both of these 
extremes. As seen in the life and teachings of the Christ 
himself, divine humanity remains conscious of its clear 
distinction from God, and its humble dependence upon 
him, as the source of all being and all goodness. “ There is 
none good save one, even God.” Yet in his dealing with 


240 The Christian Understanding of Man 

even the worst of men, Christ constantly made appeal to 
a hidden goodness in their nature, a capacity of response 
to God’s mercy, which sometimes flashed forth suddenly 
and dramatically, as in the case of Zacchaeus, and some¬ 
times ripened slowly, with many setbacks, as in the case 
of Peter. The Christian Gospel is not preached, where 
there is no appeal to this capacity. Where the appeal is 
consistently made, as in the Salvation Army with its slogan: 
“ A man may be down, but he’s never out,” the response is 
of a volume and a depth that should leave no doubt in any 
unbiased mind. Lives are changed, when the potential 
good in man is believed in, patiently, in the face of repeated 
rebuffs. Failures occur, besetting sins remain; man is still 
a creature, living by reflected light and borrowed spon¬ 
taneity. Ancient sins, embodied in persistent institu¬ 
tions, cast their shadow over the redeemed, and fill the 
church with conflict. But God has implanted his image 
in the depths of man’s soul, and by his grace, embodied in 
the Christ, has begun to pierce the thick layers of sinful 
habit and disposition with which man’s persistent misuse 
of his capacities has overlaid these depths. Whenever the 
grace of Christ, mediated by Christian love and faith, and 
manifested in the fellowship of the universal church, actu¬ 
ally pierces to the bottom of man’s heart, he begins to be 
restless; and this restlessness will continue until he sits at 
last in the place which God has designed for him: that of 
vicegerent of the divine domain on this planet, adminis¬ 
tering all its rich resources wisely and generously, in rever¬ 
ent service of his Creator and Redeemer and in love of 
all his fellow creatures. 

When will modern man return to this understanding of 
his origin, place and destiny? We do not know. When 
he does, he will be delivered from his alternating moods of 
pride and terror, and recover a sense of his true worth. In 


Walter Marshall Horton 


241 


obedience to the will of God, he will find his peace. Until 
he does, he must continue to seek his chief end where it 
is not to be found — in himself, or in the institutions he 
has created — and as each idol collapses in its turn, he 
must expect to be delivered over to a deeper and deeper 
sense of the misery and meaninglessness of existence. 




















- 































THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MAN 

by 

Pierre Maury 






THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF MAN 


Before examining the content of Christian anthropology, 
it is well to recall what we are to understand by a Christian 
doctrine. Such a doctrine systematically expounds truths 
of faith, that is, truths which are known in a specific way, 
differently from all the other human ways of knowledge, 
and consequently subject to a specific standard of judg¬ 
ment which is different from all the other human criteria 
of truth. Concretely, a Christian doctrine expounds re¬ 
alities which are known by the miracle of the Holy Spirit 
who reveals them to us; and it is subject to one sole cri¬ 
terion: its conformity with Holy Scripture, the witness of 
the revelation. Thus it is not because it is more satisfying 
for the mind, or because it does justice more completely 
to the rich variety of human experience, that a doctrine 
is true for the church; it is solely because it is biblical. 

It is particularly important to recall this definition when 
one is taking up the problem of anthropology. For in this 
domain it seems at first sight to be quite unnecessary to 
have recourse to an external revelation in order to under¬ 
stand the object studied. 

When we are dealing with man, are we not dealing with 
ourselves — that is, with the reality, perhaps the only re¬ 
ality, that we can attain immediately? Here it is not the 
same as in the other sciences; the subject and the object 
coincide. The famous formula, “ Know thyself,” would 
thus define very exactly the unique situation of anthro¬ 
pology. It is the same self which knows and is known; it 
has only to apprehend itself. It is true that philosophical 

245 


246 The Christian Understanding of Man 

criticism has contested this affirmation of pure idealism; 
it has questioned or even denied that the man who knows 
himself and the man who is known are equivalent. And 
that is why there have been and always will be very differ¬ 
ent if not antagonistic anthropologies. But it remains 
true that a doctrine of man naturally appears to all thinkers 
to be one of our innate possibilities. Does not any talk 
of an anthropology which supposes or implies any other 
factor than man himself simply ruin its strictness in ad¬ 
vance and sally out into the realm of chimerical specula¬ 
tions? It is this conviction that anthropology constitutes 
a privileged field of human knowledge which has incited 
many Christian thinkers to imagine comparisons, or even 
rapprochements such as are impossible elsewhere, between 
secular philosophies and Christian theology. Is not man 
always the same? Is it not enough that everyone should 
employ the same application and the same good faith 
in order to know him? Thus, according to several theo¬ 
logians, the very lively curiosity about human nature which 
one sees being shown in systems very remote from the 
Christian faith might furnish the latter with a special op¬ 
portunity of establishing its truth. 

It is also true that at all times certain theologians have 
upheld the view that faith is only the fulfilment of a pos¬ 
sibility latent in every man, and that the analysis of the 
immediate data of knowledge, such as may be undertaken 
by natural philosophy, must necessarily issue in a demand 
for the supernatural, even the Christian supernatural. 
Numerous expositions have been given to the famous 
formula " anima naturaliter Christiana ” such, for example, 
as the following: every man bears within him the need 
to transcend himself, the knowledge of his existence in¬ 
volves a feeling of insufficiency, and the Christian revela¬ 
tion corresponds to that aspiration, prolongs it and satisfies 


Pierre Maury 


247 

it; or again: every man at grips with his inner contradic¬ 
tion, torn between his reality and his ideal, seeks for a 
solution to that duality, and the Christian revelation is 
the synthesis of these antagonistic elements; or again: every 
man suffers by the limitation of time and space, and dreams 
of eternity, that is, the abolition of these limits, and the 
Christian revelation proposes to him a “ beyond ” which 
transcends these barriers which shut him in. In theologi¬ 
cal language, these thinkers consider that “ grace fulfills 
nature ”; they do indeed agree that grace transcends na¬ 
ture, but they maintain that it is in continuity with it 
and that even when it contradicts it, grace still takes nature 
as its point of departure. Every man would thus be a po¬ 
tential Christian, and that by nature and not by an absolute 
miracle. By developing his latent possibilities with the 
aid of God, he could “ become what he is.” For these 
theologians — of whom Roman Catholicism furnishes the 
most eminent representatives — the natural knowledge of 
man by himself must logically fulfill itself in the Christian 
anthropology, which thus becomes the crown of all true 
anthropology: human ethics postulate Christian ethics, 
rational metaphysics aspire to the theology which will be 
their fulfilment, the natural sociology of justice and love 
is a stage on the way toward a doctrine of the communion 
of saints. 

It must be categorically affirmed that that is not the 
biblical conception. The biblical conception differs radi¬ 
cally from any philosophy or theology whose starting point 
is the reality of man as known by experience. For the 
Bible, in regard to man as well as in regard to all its other 
objects, the divine revelation is never for a moment to be 
reduced to a philosophy, and the knowledge of faith is 
never assimilable, comparable or continuous with natural 
experience. To the postulate of every non-Christian an- 


248 The Christian Understanding of Man 

thropology that the knowledge of self has its origin in the 
consciousness and observation of self, the Bible opposes its 
own postulate that man cannot know himself, “ in his 
light he does not see light /’ 1 Every non-Christian anthro¬ 
pology admits that when man asks “ Who am I? ” he knows 
what he is asking and has the possibility of recognizing 
in himself or outside himself the truth of the satisfactory 
reply to that question. The Bible on the contrary, while it 
recognizes that this question is a true question, affirms not 
only that this true question cannot find any satisfactory 
solution in any human reflection, but also that it is true 
and truly put only when it is put, not by man, but to man. 
For the Bible, it is God who asks “ Adam, where art thou? ” 
and not Adam who asks himself. In a word, the problem 
of our life truly exists, according to the Bible, only if it 
comes to us from God and not from ourselves. 

Thus, to be really Christian, it is necessary that anthro¬ 
pology, like the other theological doctrines, should give up 
taking as its starting point the same knowledge as the secu¬ 
lar anthropologies take. Much more than this — it must 
refuse to be compared with them and subjected to their 
criteria. Just as metaphysics are incapable of judging the 
truth of the revelation, which on the contrary judges all 
philosophy, so an anthropology according to the Bible can¬ 
not be judged by any secular anthropology; it judges them 
all. 

The limits within which an anthropological doctrine may 
lay claim to the title of Christian having been thus defined, 
what must the content of this doctrine be? One might un¬ 
dertake the task of determining this according to the bibli¬ 
cal revelation in several ways. The simplest and strictest 
is undoubtedly to do it by reference to the essential object 

1 Cf. Psalm 36:9. 


Pierre Maury 


249 

of that revelation: God in Christ reconciling the world unto 
himself. To know who is man, it is necessary and sufficient 
to know that God was made man and what that incarnation 
means. It is in the assumption of human nature by Jesus 
Christ that we can know the mystery of that nature. Cer¬ 
tainly the humanity of Jesus Christ is unique, since it is 
that of the Son of God; certainly, just as he was true man, 
the mediator was true God, and so we cannot know his 
reality by starting from our own. But that absolute dis¬ 
tinction does not suppress anything of his voluntary identi¬ 
fication of himself with our humanity. If we cannot define 
him according to what we are, we must allow ourselves to 
be defined by him as he is in his incarnation, for he “ was 
in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin,” 2 and 
as for that capital difference of nature between him and us, 
we cannot forget that he was “ made . . . sin for us.” 3 
Thus it is the reality of Christ which can reveal to us our 
human reality. 

Here it is necessary to guard against a possible misunder¬ 
standing. This would consist in defining man according to 
his knowledge of Jesus Christ and reducing anthropology 
to a doctrine of the believer, of the “ new man,” or in other 
words to absorb anthropology in soteriology. It is indeed 
true that in Christian dogmatics no knowledge of man is 
possible outside a knowledge of the salvation of man; it is 
true that only the cross can reveal to us the meaning of the 
fall , and only the resurrection and its promise can unveil to 
us the creation in the image of God . 4 But just because we 
have to do with the revelation of a real fall and with the 
promise of a real resurrection — in a word, just because a 
real reconciliation is wrought in Christ incarnate — it is 

2 Hebrews 4:15. 

* n Cor. 5:21; cf. Gal. 3:13. 

4 Col. 1:15; 3:10; Eph. 4:24; n Cor. 4:4. 


250 The Christian Understanding of Man 

evident that there does exist on the authority of the Bible 
a doctrine of the nature which is fallen, condemned to 
death, unreconciled. Even if this nature is known only in 
the divine act which makes a “ new creature ” of it, it is 
nonetheless the reality which that divine act has as its ob¬ 
ject. The doctrine of salvation implies a doctrine of man 
which must be expounded separately. 

Human nature as donned or assumed by Christ is defined 
and unveiled in all its entirety in the fact of the cross. It is 
a mortal nature; Christ came in the flesh to “ suffer many 
things . . . and be killed.” Christ 3 crucified is the only 
thing we can and ought to know 6 not only as regards the 
salvation of man but also as regards the nature of man. 
But this mortal character is not that which any secular an¬ 
thropology can affirm as the characteristic of our existence; 
it has “ in Christ ” a special and unique signification: the 
signification of a judgment, a condemnation. Death is not 
the condition of man; it is the verdict pronounced upon 
man. Jesus underwent it as the terrible and unfathomable 
will of God. Paul calls it “ wages.” 7 Thus Christian an¬ 
thropology is essentially a consideration of death and the 
reasons for it . 8 The Old Testament already defined the 
very nature of all flesh (“ flesh ” being in biblical terms the 
anthropological notion par excellence) in this way: “ All 
flesh is grass.” 9 

That, it will be said, is an absolutely negative content. 
It is true that any doctrine of man which is in conformity 
with the gospel of Jesus Christ crucified must have a nega¬ 
tive note as its dominant note: is not baptism — which is 
essentially the act in which the church faces and takes hold 
of the natural reality of man — a baptism into the death 


5 Matt. 16:21. 
« 1 Cor. 2:2. 

7 Rom. 6:23. 


8 Rom. 5:12-14; Eph. 2:5. 

9 Is. 40:6-8. 


Pierre Maury 


251 

of Christ, burial into death, conformity to his death? 10 
Every time that this dominant note is weakened, every time 
that human possibilities are exalted in any way at all and 
even with all the reservations imaginable, it is the very sub¬ 
stance of Christianity which is injured. If anthropology 
had to consist in investigating what there was in man that 
could render the cross of Christ useless, that could develop 
without it, that would have no need of being denied by the 
judgment of God pronounced on Calvary — then it would 
be purely and simply extra-Christian and even anti-Chris¬ 
tian. In this sense there is an incompatibility between the 
Christian doctrine and the secular doctrines of man which 
tends directly or indirectly to exalt or to develop all or part 
of nature, to realize the vitality of nature as it is given to us. 

What does this character of the Christian doctrine as a 
mortal judgment pronounced in the crucifixion of Christ 
on human nature signify? Above all, it designates the con¬ 
dition of that nature, its submission to a sovereign power — 
that is, its creaturely condition. Biblically it is the power 
of God to kill and make alive 11 which defines his creative 
function. Scripture never considers the relations of the 
world with God as the many cosmogonies do, that is, from 
the viewpoint of a physical or philosophical causality; but 
it does consider them as relations of dependence. The 
story of Genesis is perfectly explicit in this respect: it is the 
dominion of God over his work which is brought out, even 
and indeed especially when he delegates that dominion to 
man so that the latter may exercise it over the rest of crea¬ 
tion . 12 When it is said there that man is “ in the image of 
God,” that affirmation is made in immediate relation with 
this right which is conferred upon him of subjecting to him¬ 
self all that is on earth . 13 The condition of man thus con- 


10 Cf. Rom. 6:3-5. 

11 Deut. 32:39. 


12 Gen. 1:26-30. 
is Gen. 1:26. 


252 The Christian Understanding of Man 

sists before everything else in depending at every moment 
upon the will of an Other who alone has the power to call 
to life, to make alive, because life belongs to him alone. He 
does not need us in order to exist , 14 whereas we never are 
except through him. But this dependence does not define 
man specifically; for it is the condition of the whole crea¬ 
tion. That which constitutes humanity properly so-called, 
the distinctive character of human nature, is the knowledge 
of that relation, or, to put it otherwise, the personal and 
conscious character of the relations between this special 
creature that we are and God. To be “ created in the 
image of God ” thus does not mean at all the possession 
of some divinity in oneself; on the contrary, it is the knowl¬ 
edge that one is only an image in regard to God. The no¬ 
tion of divine likeness as the Bible enunciates it implies 
the knowledge of a subordination and never the knowledge 
of an analogy of nature of which man could take advan¬ 
tage . 15 Not the pride of any autonomy, but the full knowl¬ 
edge of an absolute heteronomy. The fact that in God 
“ we live, and move, and have our being ” 16 means not, as 
the pantheists interpret it, that we participate in the divine 
nature, but on the contrary that none of our reality ever 
has any existence except by the sovereign and transcendent 
will of the Lord of heaven and earth . 17 It is this conception 
which the biblical indications of the end of the creation 
make clear. The creation has its end, not in itself but in 
God to whom it must give glory. “ The world is ‘ good * 
for man, that is to say that it allows him to serve God: that 
is the concrete content of faith in God the creator.” 18 All 
things were created by Christ, but also for him . 19 

Acts 17:25. 

1 5 When Gen. 9:6 and James 3:9 recall this given fact of creation, they 
do so precisely in order to emphasize that every man made in the image of 
God belongs to him and to him alone. 

is Acts 17:28. is Karl Barth. 

17 Cf. Acts 17:24-27. 19 Col. 1:16; cf. Eph. 1:4-6. 


Pierre Maury 


253 

Here it is important to recall that according to the Bible 
the knowledge of this creaturely state is a knowledge of 
faith. It is “ through faith ” that “ we understand that the 
worlds were framed by the Word of God.” 20 This affirma¬ 
tion not only excludes the possibility of reducing the rela¬ 
tion of Creator and creature to a relation of causality, but 
also indicates that this relation is one of responsibility: of 
a Word spoken and believed. It is not by speculating on 
his origins that man can know what he is (though that is 
the postulate of all the anthropologies); it is by listening 
to what is announced to him and obeying what is com¬ 
manded him. To know by faith that one is created is to 
know that one has to give an account of one’s life because 
one does not possess it but is always receiving it. 

But the fact that this faith is also faith in Christ, cruci¬ 
fied by the will of God, faith in the destruction of this life 
by the very One who gives it and without whom it does not 
for a moment exist; or to put it otherwise, the fact that the 
knowledge of our true nature takes place in the mortal 
judgment passed on Calvary upon that nature — that fact 
implies that the relation of creation between God and man 
is incomprehensibly and radically spoiled. That is the 
absolute paradox of the human condition according to the 
Bible: life as we know it is not life; it is the contrary of 
true life, it is already dead and not only promised to death . 21 
It is sinful. The notion of sin in Christian doctrine must 
indeed be understood in a radical sense. Sin is not a mere 
modification of the first nature of man, of his creaturely 
state: it is the absolute contradiction of it. Does it not in 
effect consist in the refusal of subordination, in the procla¬ 
mation of autonomy, in self-affirmation by disobedience? 

To depend upon oneself, to be accountable only to one¬ 
self for one’s life: that is the sovereign good for the fallen 
creature. Thus one cannot confuse the biblical notion of 
20 Heb. 11:3. 21 Eph. 2:1 and 5; Luke 9:60. 


254 The Christian Understanding of Man 

sin with that of moral fault, that is, with the notion of an in¬ 
sufficiency to realize oneself or that of a free disobedience 
of one’s conscience. Sin is a state of revolt against the 
Creator, against his sovereign right to give life and to take 
it away. Hence the relative human value of the works of 
that monstrous being which the sinner is because he is a 
creature without a Creator is of very little importance; 
these works are vitiated in their very origin. Sin is original. 

Here again it is important to specify how according to 
the Bible we can know this condition of our concrete exist¬ 
ence. Once again, this is a knowledge of faith. Only a 
Word of God — the Word of judgment pronounced on 
Calvary upon the human nature assumed by Christ — can 
reveal to us “ the full gravity of sin ” (quanti ponderis sit 
peccatum: Anselm) and the true nature of death. Death, 
the wages of sin, appears there indeed, not as the termina¬ 
tion of life, but as the curse which strikes it, the deed and 
the effect of the divine anger. Dereliction of God — “ My 
God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? ” 22 — has 
taken the place of the communion with God which is the 
goal of creation. It is a far cry from this absolute of pun¬ 
ishment to the natural knowledge of death which the secu¬ 
lar anthropologies may incorporate into their exaltation of 
life. 

Such are the two essential given facts in the Christian 
doctrine of man. Each of them must be upheld as strictly 
as the other; their contradictory, paradoxical character 
must not for a moment be minimized; the nature of the 
knowledge which is accorded of it must never be forgotten 
or transformed into a natural, psychological or metaphysi¬ 
cal knowledge. In order to avoid these three dangers, it is 
necessary to specify more explicitly each one of these facts, 
and also the mode in which they are revealed. 

22 Matt. 27:46. 


Pierre Maury 


255 

The fact that man is and always remains a creature does 
not appear only in the story of Genesis and before the fall, 
so that one might imagine that since that fall and before 
the restoration by Christ of his fallen nature, man lived 
somehow outside his dependence upon God. Biblically, 
sinful man remains nevertheless without ceasing in the 
hands of Providence. As Psalm 139 indicates for example, 
no area and no moment of life escapes from the presence 
and the power of God. Behind and before, right up till the 
tomb, every existence is enveloped by the Creator. How 
would it still exist without that sovereign act? The sign of 
that Presence is that God manifests his sovereign presence 
in the world without any ambiguity. The invisible perfec¬ 
tions of God, his eternal power and Godhead, are clearly 
seen from the creation of the world when they are consid¬ 
ered in his works. 23 Above all, God does not cease to speak 
to man, that is, to treat him as his image, as being respon¬ 
sible before him. He addresses himself to him notably in 
the Law. The Law is not different from the creative word. 
Just like the latter 24 it contains a gift, a demand and a 
promise; like it, it marks a radical distinction and subordi¬ 
nation as between the Creator and the creature; like it, it 
gives life by making responsible. The commandment leads 
to life. 25 To this universal manifestation, this constant 
Word of God, correspond what the secular anthropologies 
call the religious sense and the moral sense. 

But we cannot forget that this primary fact of our nature 
— our creaturely condition — is known to us in the Word 
of judgment of the cross: that the Law issues in the death 
of Christ. That is because sin is just as universal and just 
as constant as the manifestation and the Word of God the 
Creator. Biblically, none of the affirmations which relate 
to the sovereignty and the providence of God makes the dec- 

53 Cf. Rom. 1:20. 24 Gen. 1:26-30. 25 Rom. 7:10. 


256 The Christian Understanding of Man 

laration of the radical corruption of the fallen creation any 
the less severe. Because he is a sinner, man does not know 
at all the God by whom he lives and whose perfections are 
visible everywhere about him. His ignorance breaks out 
in his idolatry; his religious sense is capable only of creating 
false gods, of adoring the creature instead of the Creator. 26 
In a world where God is omnipresent, this man is “ god¬ 
less,” “ without God.” 27 Because he is a sinner, man does 
not know God in the Law of God. He does not hear in it 
the Word of grace; on the contrary, he finds in it the occa¬ 
sion to assert himself, to justify himself in his autonomy; 
the occasion to sin. “ Sin seduced me by the command¬ 
ment, and by it made me die.” 28 The moral sense is able 
only “ to multiply the offence.” More: because he is a 
sinner, man cannot do what he would, 29 he cannot love 
God, he cannot not sin; he has become irremediably the 
slave of himself, the slave of sin. 30 

Without a doubt, the essential thing in Christian anthro¬ 
pology consists in maintaining these two contradictory facts 
of human nature at the same time. For the temptation is 
great to limit the one by the other, to try to work out a 
synthesis of them. Usually the attempt is made to reduce 
the extent or the absoluteness of sin; only a part of our 
being (the body, or the flesh, or the will, but not the soul 
or the mind, etc. . . .) is considered to be irremediably 
fallen; or again, the revolt of the creature is reduced to an 
insufficiency, an incapacity, a weakness. Thus one ends by 
excusing or even justifying sin, by divinizing the creature 
through declaring it to be capable by itself of knowing and 
obeying God. Now it is necessary to understand that no 
human synthesis of this antagonism is possible, any more 


26 Rom. 1:21-25. 

27 Eph. 2:12. 

28 Rom. 7:8-9. 


29 Rom. 7:19. 
so Rom. 6:17. 


Pierre Maury 


257 

than it is humanly possible to make the cross wisdom; it is 
and remains folly. Likewise it is necessary to renounce 
the attempt to identify the knowledge of these two contra¬ 
dictory facts with a philosophical pessimism or optimism. 
It is in faith, by divine revelation, that they are appre¬ 
hended. And that special knowledge unveils to us at the 
same time the synthesis which is humanly impossible but 
divinely realized. We learn by it that what is forever folly 
for our wisdom is nevertheless wisdom by and for God. 
“ Howbeit we speak wisdom.” 31 To put it otherwise: be¬ 
cause we know the contradictory facts of our nature in the 
cross which is also, which is firstly the act of reconciliation, 
the act which abolishes the contradiction, we know at the 
same time that the synthesis exists in God and that it is im¬ 
possible to realize by any other than by him, that is, impos¬ 
sible by ourselves. The word of judgment on Calvary, 
which reveals the whole content of Christian anthropology, 
is revelatory only because it is a word of grace; man knows 
who he is at the moment when he knows that he is freely 
saved from his perdition. 

It is in this central affirmation of Christian theology, and 
notably of the theology of the Reformation, that the doc¬ 
trine of man and the doctrine of the salvation of man meet. 
Without entering upon the content of the latter, we must 
recall in what way it qualifies the former. Let us say quite 
simply that anthropology always considers the creature in 
the perspective of the intention of God, who “ will have 
all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the 
truth ” 32 ; who “ hath concluded them all in unbelief, that 
he might have mercy upon all.” 33 It is the eschatological 
promise which lights up the temporal reality. It is the 
resurrection which contains and unveils the meaning of the 
cross. Thus the whole of human existence is referred to 

si 1 Cor. 2:6. 32 1 Tim. 2:4. 33 Rom. 11:32. 


258 The Christian Understanding of Man 

the fulfilment which is promised it by the divine mercy; the 
creation finds its signification in the new creation of which 
Christ is “ the first fruits ” 34 and for which it groans. 35 It 
is thus, for example, that the biblical revelation recalls with 
regard to the doctrine of the imago Dei 36 that only Jesus 
Christ is in our world the image of God, and that for us 
this resemblance is promised only for the future 37 and in 
the measure in which we, “ beholding as in a glass the glory 
of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to 
glory.” 38 

From this point of view there also appears the meaning 
— which is of capital significance for anthropology — of 
the world of the present age in which we are living, of the 
aeon between the fall and the resurrection. For we are 
living in the contradictory economy of the cross; we are 
at present being conserved in our impossible state of crea¬ 
tures in revolt. This time which is ours must not be under¬ 
stood to be anything other than that of the patience of God, 
the time which is left us to repent. 39 For biblical anthro¬ 
pology, the form of this world is destined to pass, the truth 
of man is to come. It is of mercy that God seems to post¬ 
pone the manifestation of this truth. During this period 
of human disobedience and divine patience, we subsist 
strictly speaking by the pardon of God. In our present 
state, dependence on God is dependence on his mercy. 
Just as God the creator is God the reconciler, just as Christ, 
“ in whom, by whom and also for whom we are created,” is 
he who redeems us from our vain manner of life, 40 so if we 
“ live, and move, and have our being,” that is not because 
we are created beings who have not fallen, but because we 


s* 1 Cor. 15:22-23. 

85 Rom. 8:18-25. 

80 11 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15. 
1 John 3:2. 


38 11 Cor. 3:18; cf. Rom. 8:29. 
8» 11 Peter 3:9; cf. Heb. 3:7-18. 
*0 1 Pet. 1:18. 


Pierre Maury 


259 

are beings to whom God gives grace, will give grace, by re¬ 
storing the vital bond which we refuse. 

That is why this grace allows us to subsist, even in our 
condemnation and despite it. When we accept it in Christ, 
it is the end of the condemnation and the promise of our 
final reestablishment in our original imago Dei. 

So, as long as the life of man here below goes on, it is 
called to repentance, to faith and to hope. The revelation 
discerns and awakens this great expectation in every human 
conscience and in the whole universe. And so the Chris¬ 
tian does not work out two anthropologies: that of the 
Christian and that of the pagan. He knows that “ the 
whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together 
until now; and not only they, but ourselves also, which 
have the first fruits of the Spirit ” 41 ; and he leaves to Christ 
the last judgment which will make a separation between 
men. 

This exposition, which we have endeavored to keep 
strictly within the limits and language of the Bible, carries 
with it several consequences as regards the relations of the 
Christian anthropology with the secular anthropologies 
and also with such theologies as we shall call the pseudo- 
Christian anthropologies. Although these consequences 
have been indicated as occasion arose, it will doubtless be 
useful to present them more systematically. Perhaps this 
summary will also show at the same time that the facts of 
the scriptural revelation, despite the strict and negative 
concepts and the special language in which it is expressed, 
do not constitute an abstract scholasticism, but that on the 
contrary this hidden and mysterious wisdom 42 is always di¬ 
rected, in the act which unveils it, to the very real man, to 
the most concrete human situations; and even, as a matter 
of fact, that it is the most realistic of the interpretations of 
41 Rom. 8:22-23. 42 I Cor. 2:7. 


260 The Christian Understanding of Man 

man — the only realistic one, just because it proceeds not 
from man but from God. 

(1) In the first place, this relation of Christian anthro¬ 
pology with the humanistic anthropologies (in certain re¬ 
spects one may use this one term to describe both the secu¬ 
lar and the pseudo-Christian anthropologies, because they 
both take their starting point and set their criterion in the 
natural man) — this relation cannot be anything but nega¬ 
tive and critical. It is on principle that an anthropology 
based upon the revelation of the cross refuses to allow any 
doctrine of man based on the knowledge which that man 
has of himself the possibility of being a final knowledge. 
For the cross, that word of judgment, is precisely a verdict 
pronounced on all human nature. Man is there declared 
to be, not only incapable of knowing God completely but 
incapable of knowing him partially; he is denounced there, 
not only as partially bad but as totally in revolt. The 
natural man — he who is considered by the non-Christian 
anthropologies — is he who crucifies the Son of God and it 
is he who in the crucified humanity of Jesus Christ is given 
up to the mortal anger of God; how could that man have 
any kind of knowledge of himself and of God? All that he 
is and all that he has, all that he thinks and all that he does 
is absolutely condemned. It is all the more important to 
emphasize the consistently critical nature of this relation¬ 
ship because Christian anthropology uses concepts which it 
is easy to confuse with the secular concepts of the humanist 
anthropologies: is not sin assimilable to moral evil, ethics 
to the Law of God, salvation by the promise of the resur¬ 
rection to redemption by the development of the true, the 
best human self? 

(2) The critical nature of this relation appears more 
clearly in the nature of the knowledge which it presupposes. 
Whereas the humanist anthropologies (and here we are 


Pierre Maury 


261 


thinking in particular of the pseudo-Christian anthropolo¬ 
gies) consider everything, including the divine revelation, 
from the point of view of man, Christian anthropology en¬ 
visages nothing, not even human destiny, except in the 
light of God in Christ. Thus, the former judge and justify 
the revelation according to its consistency with nature, the 
development which it ensures for nature, and they end by 
making salvation equivalent to the supreme realization of 
the highest possibilities of man; the latter accepts that the 
revelation should really be a revelation, that is, that it 
should be able to contradict and judge all that we are and 
know, what we call good and evil; it accepts that our na¬ 
ture should have to be re-created and not developed, that 
the goal of our life should be elsewhere than in this life, 
radically heterogeneous from this life, truly another life. 
For the humanist anthropologies, the reality of this world 
prefigures and announces the beyond to which it tends; 
for Christian anthropology it is the beyond — known in 
the merciful revelation of God — which determines the 
knowledge and the evaluation of the reality of this world. 
The former enclose human life in the limits of the present 
world, even if these be extended to infinity; the latter con¬ 
siders that the new, radically new creation promised in 
Christ is alone able to give its meaning to this world which 
is destined to pass away and to our life in this world. Thus, 
to know God, the good, man and his destiny by oneself is 
absolutely opposed to knowing God, the good, man and his 
destiny by God, that is, by faith. 

(3) This relation exists nonetheless for being a critical 
one: that is to say that the Christian anthropologist is not 
ignorant of the other anthropologies, or, more simply, that 
the revelation does not purely and simply deny the fallen 
nature. It is true that man does not cease to be a creature, 
it is true that God manifests himself in the world, as the 


262 The Christian Understanding of Man 

religious sense and the moral sense testify. And equally it 
is true that the human unrest, expressed in all the anthro¬ 
pologies, testifies in them to the truth which they seek with¬ 
out being able to find it. Yes, indeed, this relation exists. 
It is necessary always to take care in defining it to maintain 
its critical character: that is to say, that the manifestation 
of God must not be confused with the knowledge of God 
or revelation, nor the religious sense in any of its forms with 
the Christian faith. God manifests himself; but man, far 
from discovering him in this manifestation, finds in it an 
occasion for idolatry. God makes known his will; but man 
finds in this law the occasion for a mortal righteousness of 
works, and remains always without excuse. 43 

So, far from being a point of departure for a true knowl¬ 
edge of God and a true obedience to his commandment, the 
human religions and moralities, because they are a total per¬ 
version of the normal relation with the Creator, do nothing 
but emphasize the culpability of sinful man; they do not in 
any degree constitute a natural theology which would need 
only to be completed by the revelation; on the contrary, 
they are denounced by that revelation as irrefutable proofs 
of forfeiture. But such as they are, they are the sign of the 
responsible nature of man. Man is not a plant or an animal; 
and when the Word of God, which accuses him by giving 
him grace on Calvary, is addressed to him, he can receive it 
and discover in it the hidden truth of his being, that truth 
which he had perverted; while recognizing himself to be 
culpable and inexcusable, he can recognize the mercy of 
God by which he lived without knowing it, the goodness 
by which he was created and which incomprehensibly has 
not ceased to sustain him even in the act by which he re¬ 
fused that goodness. To sum up, if the revelation is in no 
case the development of natural religion, it is nevertheless 
43 Rom. 1:20; 2:1. 


Pierre Maury 


263 

from the revelation that natural religion draws its signifi¬ 
cance; the false gods are really false before the living God, 
but in their falsity they testify to the expectant waiting for 
the living God. 

It is not necessary to develop at length the applications 
of these remarks to the various anthropologies which claim 
to oppose or to be compared with the Christian anthro¬ 
pology. All of them can by definition end only in a glorifi¬ 
cation of man. Even if they are pessimistic, they still exalt 
man, who is capable of knowing the misery of his condi¬ 
tion; they see in this revolt a supreme dignity. Even if 
they believe a harmonious realization of the human to be 
impossible, they find a higher value in that knowledge. 
And in any case, most of the secular anthropologies are 
more or less explicitly and naively optimistic. Whether 
they conceive the realization of their humanism as being 
bound up with a progressive knowledge of nature, or as 
being determined by the expansion of the vital instinct, or 
again as being dependent upon certain external economic 
and social conditions; whether they be moralistic, vitalistic 
or Marxist, they start from this postulate: man is capable 
of realizing his destiny to “ become what he is ” and even 
of surpassing himself. For these doctrines, history tells us 
these magnificent attempts of our species; it describes to 
us the movement of that progress. Each of these anthro¬ 
pologies also considers that it can serve as the basis of an 
ethic, the duties of man being written in his nature and 
being ultimately reducible to living in conformity with the 
real demands of that nature. When the secular anthro¬ 
pologies define evil, it is always as an inner contradiction, 
as an infidelity to oneself, as a treason of the given human 
being. For them, man sins against himself. And that con¬ 
ception implies that man has the possibility of overcoming 
that violence which he does himself, that his freedom may 


264 The Christian Understanding of Man 

triumph over it, if external conditions allow this freedom 
the possibility of exercise. 

In face of all these efforts which desire to legitimize man, 
a truly biblical anthropology begins by accepting the truth 
of the proposition that “ before God, man is always in the 
wrong ” 44 ; but in doing so it maintains that that condem¬ 
nation of nature is known only before God and pronounced 
only in Christ, that is to say, that it is a revelation of the 
cross and in no way the conclusion of an autonomous cri¬ 
tique. The Christian faith is no more pessimistic than it is 
optimistic in the philosophical sense of the term. The per¬ 
fectible man of the doctrines of progress is not the man who 
is called to be restored by a new creation to the original 
imago Dei; the bad man of the moralists is not the sinful 
man of the gospel. But at the same time a truly biblical 
anthropology will affirm that this mortal verdict is revealed 
in the divine act which by the vicarious sacrifice of Christ 
absolves the revolt and blots out the condemnation, and 
thus that it is in salvation that sin is at once denounced and 
redeemed. So it will not profess only or primarily a nega¬ 
tive knowledge of man; on the contrary, it will always 
announce positively the redemptive sovereignty of God. 
It will call to faith and not to despair. Because of this 
gospel which it preaches it will include and teach an ethic 
of obedience — not an obedience which saves, as the other 
religious moralities do, but an ethic of obedience in grate¬ 
ful recognition of the salvation freely accorded in Christ. 
The works of man, who is at the same time condemned and 
redeemed, will be in it, not meritorious works, but works of 
gratitude and witness. Finally, a truly biblical anthro¬ 
pology will recall that the world lives by the patience of 
God; that repentance must be preached in it at the same 
time as salvation, but that our human impatience must not 
44 Kierkegaard. 


Pierre Maury 


265 

set itself in the place of this divine patience, that we do not 
have to pronounce the last judgment on human works — 
moralities, civilizations, histories — but that we have to ac¬ 
cept them as the place where the message of grace must 
providently be proclaimed, and also as the “ groans of crea¬ 
tion ” after the promised resurrection. 

Practically, anthropology must be for Christian theology 
not the occasion for making the folly of the cross acceptable 
to the human mind, but as the occasion for announcing 
that folly, which is known only by the spiritual man, but 
which enables that spiritual man to judge all things with¬ 
out himself being judged of any man. 45 Some will fear 
that a message which is so exclusive, so deliberately indiffer¬ 
ent to the positive efforts of the natural man to understand 
himself and the enigma of his destiny, may end by making 
the Christian faith yet more foreign to those who do not 
profess it. Even if this fear were based on practical experi¬ 
ence, it ought not to be retained; for the church well knows 
that its criterion resides in its faithfulness to the revelation 
and not in the human success of its preaching. But it has 
no such basis. For if man expects anything of the church, 
it is that it should let him know, not what he already knows 
about himself but what he does not know, not the way in 
which he can best realize himself but the way in which God 
has himself fully realized his redemption. 

It is, therefore, important that the church and the the¬ 
ology of the church should see strictly to it that they con¬ 
serve the purity of the gospel message in the matter of 
anthropology. When we think, for example, of the affirma¬ 
tions of an anthropological character upon which several 
contemporary theories of the state, nation or class are based, 
it seems to us that the church will have to adopt an attitude 
which is at once negative and positive. Negatively, it will 
45 1 Cor. 2:15. 


266 The Christian Understanding of Man 

have to defend itself against all the solicitations which 
come to it from outside to adulterate its doctrine, and 
against the efforts made to mobilize it in the service of 
human values of any order. In face of the totalitarian 
state and its designs, the church will refuse to admit or to 
teach any theoretical and practical affirmation which would 
assign to man any final dependence (race, blood, nation, 
class, etc.) other than his dependence with regard to God; 
it will refuse to admit that any unconditional obedience — 
whether that be given to the state as personified in a dic¬ 
tator, or to institutional democracy, or to the organized 
proletariat — may be demanded of that man. And that be¬ 
cause it knows only one Lord of all men, who tolerates no 
other master beside him. 46 

Again, the church will refuse to admit or to teach that 
the fall is not real or complete; that a democracy or a dic¬ 
tatorship of the proletariat is legitimated by the natural 
goodness of man or of the class in question; or that mem¬ 
bership of any race or nation, said to be based in the order 
of creation, assures to man any integrity, any kind of inno¬ 
cence which has no need to be redeemed by the cross. 

Again, the church will refuse to admit or to teach that 
there can be any knowledge of God and of his will other 
than the knowledge given in the scriptural revelation, that 

is, outside the witness given by the prophets and the apostles 
to Jesus Christ. And so it will refuse to allow that any 
temporal circumstances or any tradition should be substi¬ 
tuted for this exclusive knowledge or claim to correct or 
complete it. Neither flesh nor blood, and so neither race 
nor history, can inspire the conduct of man by unveiling 
to him the intentions of his Creator. 

Positively, stimulated by these snares which are laid for 

it, warned by these solicitations of every kind, the church 

46 “ No man can serve two masters ” (Matt. 6:24). 


Pierre Maury 


267 

will take knowledge of the anthropology of its faith, and 
will proclaim it in word and in deed with a strict biblical 
fidelity. Seeing in every man (and not only in its mem¬ 
bers) a creature in the image of God, it will defend in each 
and for each one among them, not the sacred rights of hu¬ 
man personality, not any moral value, but “ the brother for 
whom Christ died 47 it will refuse on principle to aban¬ 
don any man (and not only its members) to the totalitarian 
attempts and claims of any earthly master and lord, or to 
entrust the salvation of anyone to any other than the sole 
Savior Jesus Christ: at the same time it will claim the right 
to proclaim its own message with a perfectly clear purity, 
even if it contradicts the ideologies of the day, and it will 
openly protest against these ideologies and the practices 
which are inspired by them. 

At the same time, because we are living in the time of 
the divine patience, the church will recognize the way in 
which, according to the Bible, God shows this patience. 
For example, it will recognize the limited rights of the 
state — limited, but legitimate within their limits. It will 
therefore refuse to substitute itself for this authority which 
the mercy of God has instituted to maintain the existence 
of a creation in revolt; it will pray for it, and recommend 
everyone to submit himself to it as to a divine will — to an 
order, ephemeral but real, imposed upon our fallen nature. 
In the same way, it will recognize the existence of the na¬ 
tion as the place where we receive our Christian vocation 
and not as a restriction imposed upon that vocation. The 
communion of grace always transcends national frontiers 
like all human frontiers; it is communio sanctorum; but it 
is lived in the national community where God has brought 
us into the world. It is in our earthly fatherland that we 
await the true fatherland, which is heavenly. Because God 


47 1 Cor. 8:11. 


268 The Christian Understanding of Man 

has “ put us in our place/’ we do not hold this place to be 
indifferent, and we love our people with a love which grate¬ 
fully recognizes a divine intention in it and which is re¬ 
sponsible, and engages our Christian loyalty. 

Above all else, in face of all the human anthropologies, 
ethics and realities, the church declares the things which 
God hath prepared for them that love him, and which have 
not entered into the heart of man. 48 It will not try to 
legitimize or to prove this revelation by showing how it 
agrees with human aspirations or reason. But it will 
preach that that revelation is altogether turned toward man 
and the world, that man and that world so loved by God 
that he gave his only-begotten Son to save them, to make 
them really that new creation where all old things are 
passed away, “ the tabernacle of God with men.” 49 So, by 
declaring the gospel, as is its only task, the church will teach 
man, not only to know himself as he is known of God, but, 
what is infinitely more important, with what an incompre¬ 
hensible Love he is always loved. 

48 i Cor. 2.9. 49 Rev. 21:3. 















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